The Gvili family’s hopeful, dignified struggle to bring Ran home

Until the last moment, Talik Gvili, the mother of Ran Gvili, refused to think of her son, the final hostage in Gaza, as definitely dead.

The counterterror police officer had jumped on his motorcycle on October 7, 2023, with a broken shoulder, and went off to fight marauding Hamas terrorists. His family did not hear from him again.

The intelligence was spotty, but the family held on to broken bits of information: ostensible photos of Ran arriving unconscious at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City; unconfirmed reports that he had been seen in the city’s Zeitoun neighborhood on the back of a motorcycle.

Even when Israel confirmed, a few months after the attack, that the officer had died in battle, his family refused to give up hope. Parents Itzik and Talik (a longtime nickname for Tali), as well as their other children, Omri and Shira, continued to speak of Ran in the present tense.

“It’s a 0.0001 chance [that he’s alive], that’s what my son [Omri] says,” Talik said to this reporter, as we sat in her living room last week. “It’s easier to speak of him as if he’s alive, for sure, because we don’t want to lose that tiny bit of hope.”

The interview with Talik was published in The Times of Israel on Monday, less than an hour before the IDF announced that Ran’s body had finally been found in a Gaza cemetery, following a search based on specific new intelligence.

As part of its campaign for his return, the family had even sanctioned the creation of an AI video in which “Ran” is seen crouched in a Gaza tunnel, speaking in his voice, asking US President Donald Trump to bring him home.

An AI-generated video of the last deceased hostage, Ran Gvili, asking US President Donald Trump to help bring his body home. (Screenshots/Hostages Forum)

Shira said in an interview in November with The Times of Israel that she was nervous about what to expect if her brother was brought home, and what they would receive.

“How will he be brought to us?” she wondered. “Will it blow up the calm I’ve sort of had, to receive a coffin all of a sudden?”

Talik Gvili, always pragmatic, did not engage in that kind of talk. The family law attorney focused all her efforts, along with Itzik, on the unyielding struggle to bring her boy back.

After the IDF shared intelligence on January 30, 2024, that Ran had been killed on October 7, and his body abducted, the Gvilis appeared to align themselves with the hawkish Tikvah Forum — the small group of hostages’ families who repeatedly said they did not want a deal for their loved ones, but rather continued military pressure on Hamas.

Talik said she understood the pain and anguish of other hostages’ families, but could not join the protests and rallies calling for a hostage deal, under the broader banner of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the ad hoc volunteer organization that supported the families since October 7.

It wasn’t until the ceasefire of October 2025, when the last 20 living hostages were released, and the remains of other deceased hostages were returned, that the Gvilis began working more publicly with the Hostages Forum,

They appeared at rallies, they organized their own event in their hometown of Meitar, and they came to Tel Aviv every Friday afternoon for a Kabbalat Shabbat gathering organized by the Kibbutz Movement.

Talik was clearly moved by these events, by the mix of people who showed up, by the former hostages who sat by her side, as she wore a shirt with Ran’s image, along with hostage pins, necklaces, and a yellow piece of tape with the number of days he had been missing.

So was Itzik, who spent many days speaking to groups about his son, and who regularly visited Kibbutz Alumim, where Ran fell in battle, about a 50-minute drive from their home.

This past Friday at the square, the couple sang some Shabbat songs with members of Kibbutz Ein Tsurim, listened to former hostage Segev Kalfon, and heard moving words from the sister of slain hostage Shlomo Mansour of Kibbutz Kissufim (Shlomo and Itzik met during the latter’s time in the army, when he was embedded at the kibbutz).

The parents hugged a long line of friends and supporters at the end, and then spoke with IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir, who stopped by before entering the Kirya, the IDF headquarters located just across from the square.

Zamir told the Gvilis he was optimistic that their son would be found. Talik told him they were relying on him, “truly relying.” She said she had faith in the government, the army, and the security forces.

In the end, they found her son for her.