Slain hostage Ronen Engel is laid to rest, remembered for his boundless optimism

Slain hostage Ronen Engel was laid to rest Tuesday in his home community, Kibbutz Nir Oz, with his family recalling a husband and father who was full of optimism and infectious humor.

A motorcade of motorcycles, many with Israeli flags attached, accompanied Engel’s body as he was brought to the kibbutz for burial.

Engel, 54, who was killed in the kibbutz and whose body was seized and taken to Gaza by Hamas terrorists on October 7, 2023, was a devoted motorcycle rider. His body was returned by Hamas on Saturday evening.

His widow, daughters, and brother eulogized him as optimistic and adventurous, full of life and laughter, whose motto was “Always look on the bright side of life.”

“You were the heart of our home — the one who knew how to make us laugh even on the hardest days, with your endless humor and optimism,” said Engel’s widow, Karina Engel-Bart. “You were always smiling, always with a witty line that made everyone turn to look at you and ask, ‘Is he serious?’ — and then hear you say, ‘I’m crazy, but I’m optimistic.'”

Engel-Bart was taken hostage the day her husband was killed, along with their two daughters. They were released the following month. A son, Tom, was not at home when the attack took place.

Engel’s oldest daughter, Mika, now 20, eulogized her father, saying she’ll never get to call him “Abush” again.

“It was you and me against the world — and now it’s just me, alone against the world,” she said. “A world that’s torn me into a million pieces and is devouring me. How will I ever cope without you?

“I’m so tired of crying over your picture — I’d give anything to cry with you, just one more time, and not about you,” she said. “But, Abush — I’ve decided I’m going to live for you. I’ll do everything, I’ll see everything — for you.”

Engel’s youngest daughter, Yuval, now 12, remembered the “ten short but amazing years in which I got to be your little girl.”

His older brother Dani remembered that his brother used to call himself Nini when he was little.

He recalled his brother’s adventurous spirit, how they sometimes clashed, and another nickname given to him, Guli Gulliver.

“You had ‘ALWAYS’ tattooed on your arm,” said Engel. “Only after October 7 did I really understand — that’s exactly how you lived your life. In the end, I’ve learned from you.”

In a statement, the Engel family said that “after 744 says of longing, doubts, and uncertainty, our beloved Ronen has returned home, to the soil of Nir Oz that he so loved. Now we can begin the rehabilitation process that we need and that we so much waited for. Now we will have a burial plot to cry over.”

The family also noted that matters will not be brought to a close until all the remaining bodies of hostages, two of whom are from Nir Oz, are brought home.

The Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main organization representing hostages’ families, said in a statement that “alongside the pain and the understanding that the heart will never be complete,” the return of Engel’s body is “a kind of balm for the family that lived with uncertainty and tormenting doubt for over two years.”

A volunteer EMT, Engel loved exploring Israel by motorcycle or 4×4. The Tel Aviv native moved to Nir Oz in 2010 with his wife and two daughters.

Engel was killed on October 7 after he set out to try to help others as a volunteer medic. In total, 47 people were killed in Nir Oz during the terror attack.

On December 1, 2023, the IDF confirmed that he had been killed and his body was being held in Gaza.

The family sat shiva in a hotel near Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, where Yuval Engel was still being treated after her release, but a funeral was not held.

Caskets with the remains of Engel and Thai national Sonthaya Oakkharasri, 30, were picked up by the Red Cross in the southern Gaza Strip on Saturday night and then transferred to the Israel Defense Forces.

The two caskets were inspected by the army, then draped in Israeli flags and honored in a brief ceremony led by a military rabbi before being taken to the Abu Kabir forensic institute in Tel Aviv, where experts worked to identify the remains and determine the cause of death.

After Engel’s body was identified, Mika Engel wrote on Instagram that her father was “finally home.”

“It’s not what we hoped, it’s not what we wished for him, but it’s finally here,” she added. “Our hearts are with the families of the hostages, and we won’t stop until the final slain hostage” is returned home.

The war in Gaza started on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking 251 hostages amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.

Fighting stopped last weekend, after Israeli and Hamas negotiators signed the US-brokered deal, presented as the first phase of a 20-point White House peace plan, which would eventually see Hamas disarmed, Gaza demilitarized, and the installation of a transitional, “technocratic” government that could eventually hand power to the Palestinian Authority if the latter completes certain reforms.

As of Tuesday afternoon, the remains of 15 deceased hostages had yet to be returned by Hamas.