Two hostages released by Hamas were reunited on Wednesday in a Jerusalem cemetery for a final goodbye.
Surrounded by hundreds of mourners, Matan Angrest, who had returned to Israel just two days earlier, stood before the freshly dug grave cradling his 22-year-old commander, Captain Daniel Peretz, and paid his respects.
He prayed for more to make it home, including Sergeant Itay Chen — another member of their unit whose body is still held in Gaza.
Photo: Reuters
“It’s the least I can do for Daniel and the team that fought with me,” said Angrest, 22, his voice strong despite his pallor and evident weakness. “I’m sure that they are still guarding me from heaven.”
Angrest, Peretz and Chen were serving on a tank crew when they were taken during the Hamas-led attack on Oct. 7, 2023. Militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 captives that day.
“I wish he could come back. I’m ready to go to Gaza to bring him back,” Angrest said of Chen.
Photo: AP
Under the terms of the ceasefire, Hamas is supposed to return all 28 of the deceased hostages’ bodies held in Gaza, but only 10 bodies had been released as of early yesterday.
One was determined not to be a hostage’s.
That left some families in the devastating limbo they have endured for more than two years, unable to give their loved ones the proper burial that in Judaism is an essential covenant with God, the deceased and the survivors.
Photo: AFP
“This is our obligation to God, we take the body and return it to the land,” said Rabbi Benny Lau, a friend of the Peretz family. “The soul belongs to God and returns to God, but the body is our responsibility.”
The three largest monotheistic religions — Christianity, Islam and Judaism — teach that a person’s soul continues to exist after being separated from the body by death.
In Judaism there are also specific teachings that the body needs to be left as intact as possible and buried as quickly as possible, with ritual cleansing and prayers.
“The idea of respecting the dead is intrinsic to the Jewish life cycle,” said Sharon Laufer, who has volunteered as part of Jewish burial societies, and is a reserve soldier in a special unit that identifies and prepares bodies of fallen soldiers for burial. “Until the body is put in the ground, the soul is not complete, and that’s why it’s so important to us.”
In normal circumstances, that means funerals are held within a day.
In the case of the Jewish hostages, it translates into the ongoing struggle — involving government negotiators and family prayers — to bring everyone’s remains back.
“We cannot close that chapter of these two years without returning all of them,” Lau said.
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