‘We’re ready for him to come home,’ says sister of deceased hostage Ran Gvili

The family of Ran Gvili, one of the three remaining deceased hostages left in Gaza, is eagerly awaiting their loved one’s return, with his sister Shira describing a growing sense of loneliness as their plight, once shared by hundreds and later dozens of families, is now narrowed to just a few.

The remaining captives also consist of Kibbutz Be’eri resident Dror Or and Thai foreign worker Sudthisak Rinthalak.

Ran Gvili was last heard from on October 7, 2023, when he set out to join the fight against Hamas in southern Israel amid the Palestinian terror group’s invasion.

Gvili, a member of the Yasam police counter-terror unit, was on medical leave at the time, awaiting surgery on his broken shoulder following a motorcycle accident while off-roading. When he heard of the attack, he put on his uniform and headed toward the front line.

He texted his friends later that morning that he had been shot in the leg, and it was revealed later that he helped rescue fleeing partygoers from the Nova music festival.

For months, his family held out hope that he was alive and likely held hostage in Gaza.

But on January 31, 2024, the IDF announced that Ran had been killed on October 7 while battling Hamas in Kibbutz Alumim, and his body had been taken to Gaza.

Shira Gvili, who is two years younger than her brother, told The Times of Israel in a recent interview that her family did not speak about her brother publicly in the first months after he was taken captive.

“They told us to be quiet because he was a police officer,” said Gvili. “It was also tough to talk about it.”

When the family was told in January 2024 that their son and brother was killed, they became more vocal.

Talik Gvili, Shira’s mother, has been one of the few hostage parents active in the Tikva Forum, the right-wing alternative to the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the main hostage advocacy group.

Shira Gvili said she felt at home in both organizations and that her family was supported by both groups in different ways.

“I’m not involved in the politics of it, I’m just about the hostages,” she said. “I just want them to come home.”

The Gvili family has continued speaking about Ran in the present tense; they refuse to call him a fallen soldier or to refer to him in the past tense until his body is returned to them.

In conversation, Shira Gvili veers back and forth between present and past tenses when speaking about her brother.

“We’re ready for him to come home; we don’t want to live this way any longer,” said Gvili. “It’s very, very hard. And there’s this sense of just being alone at this stage, aside from the other two families.”

At the same time, said Gvili, she’s nervous about what to expect if her brother is brought home, and what they will receive.

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

The two siblings had been planning to travel together to South America in December 2023.

“We had a dream, a big dream, and we haven’t done the trip,” said Shira Gvili, who was with her brother the night before the October 7 onslaught.

Gvili said she hasn’t been able to “do normal things” in the last two years. She works a little bit in a friend’s cafe, “because it kind of makes me feel normal for a little while,” she said.

It’s been a life of imbalance for more than two years, said Gvili.

Her oldest brother, Omri Gvili, got married on October 16 of this year, three days after the October 13 release of the last 20 remaining living hostages.

Gvili said the family is trying to carry on because that’s what her brother would want.

“I try to have Ran in my awareness all the time,” she said. “I try to speak about him all the time, so that people know the story about him.”

Gvili said her brother was seriously injured during his army service and fought to be in the Yasam police unit. He adored his two boxer dogs, played guitar — especially songs by American musician Carlos Santana — and was an amateur carpenter who built tables and a bed for himself.

He also loved riding motorcycles, as he was on that Saturday when he went to fight Hamas terrorists invading the south.

“When he is returned, I’ll take my trip and fulfill his dream,” said Gvili. “I’ll visit Brazil, Colombia and Mexico and feel him there with me.”