Oded Lifshitz, hostage slain by Islamic Jihad, was journalist and peace activist
Lifshitz, among Nir Oz’s founders, defended expelled Bedouins, reported on infamous massacres of Palestinians by Israel-backed militias, and drove sick Gazans to Israeli hospitals
Oded Lifshitz, the hostage whose body was returned on Thursday to Israel, was a veteran journalist, long-time defender of Palestinian rights, and a founder of the kibbutz where he lived and was abducted.
He was taken hostage, aged 83, from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz by Palestinian terrorists during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel alongside his wife Yocheved Lifshitz, 85.
They were among 251 people taken hostage that day, after thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel from the Gaza Strip, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparking the subsequent war.
Yocheved Lifshitz was released 16 days later, for what Hamas called “humanitarian reasons.”
Interviewed on Israel’s Kan public broadcaster on Wednesday, she said her husband had “fought for the Palestinians his whole life — they betrayed him and took him to hell.”
In a long career with the now defunct, left-leaning newspaper Al-Hamishmar, which was associated with the kibbutz movement, he defended Palestinian rights and advocated for peace.
In 1972, he defended Bedouins who were expelled from the Sinai Peninsula by Israeli authorities.
A decade later, during the Lebanese civil war and Israel’s invasion of Lebanon, he was one of the first journalists to report on the Sabra and Shatila massacres in which Israeli-backed Christian militias killed between 800 and 2,000 Palestinians in Beirut refugee camps.
More recently, Lifshitz, an Arabic speaker, had been actively involved for years with Road for Recovery, an organization that helps Palestinians receive medical treatment in Israel.
According to his family, he would drive weekly to the Erez crossing on the Gaza Strip border to pick up sick Palestinians and transport them to Israeli hospitals.
In his free time, the father of four, grandfather, and great-grandfather played the piano and looked after his garden, where he planted cacti, according to Kibbutz Nir Oz. Lifshitz was among the community’s founders in 1955.
Yizhar Lifshitz, Oded’s son, told Channel 12 on Thursday that the family had feared for the elderly hostage’s life for a long time before receiving final confirmation on Thursday upon his body’s return.
“Members of our community are still inside [Gaza], some of them dead, some of them chained and starved. We have to return all of them now,” Yizhar added.
According to the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, who identified the hostage’s remains on Thursday, Lifshitz was slain in captivity more than a year ago. He was held by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group.
In a radio interview, the hostage’s son said, “We knew from someone who was released from captivity in the first deal [in November 2023] that she was with him for two weeks, in an apartment in [the southern Gaza city of] Khan Younis, through Day 20 of the war.
“We know he was sick, and that he was shot in his arm when he was holding the handle of the safe room [on October 7],” Yizhar added, referring to the reinforced room in Israeli homes that is meant to keep occupants safe from rocket attacks. “He was not in a good state.”
His grandson, Dekel, told Channel 12 that the family believes he died several weeks after being taken hostage and that his grandfather, who suffered from high blood pressure and needed daily medication, may have succumbed to the harsh conditions of his captivity and lack of treatment.
Sixty-six of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014.
