‘All the laughter is gone’: Hundreds at funeral of Ran Gvili, Israel’s final hostage

Ran Gvili, 24,  the final hostage returned from Hamas captivity in the Gaza Strip, was laid to rest in his hometown of Meitar in southern Israel on Wednesday, eulogized by family members who spoke of their pride, defiance and sorrow after a more than two-year struggle to bring back the remains of the police special forces officer killed in battle on October 7.

Hundreds of Israelis lined the roads with flags as they paid tribute to Gvili, whose body was found by IDF soldiers in a Gaza on Monday. The funeral was notable for being the first hostage burial attended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and a host of other senior officials, including far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Knesset speaker Amir Ohana and Sephardic Chief Rabbi David Yosef.

Gvili’s mother Talik eulogized her son, speaking of her pride and imagining him sitting in heaven, a glass of arak in his hand, part of a pantheon of fallen Israeli heroes, listening to the eulogies.

“Rani and the other heroes give us the strength,” said Gvili. “You’re so with me, Rani, I’m Talik Gvili, a proud, proud mother.”

She also issued a defiant warning to Israel’s enemies like Hamas who seek to destroy the Jewish state.

“You, our enemies, tried to scare us, look what’s left of you, and you’ll see what will be left of you,” she said.

Gvili, a member of the elite police Yasam unit, was awaiting surgery for a broken shoulder on October 7, 2023, when he began hearing about the Hamas invasion, a 50-minute drive from his family home in Meitar.

He threw on his uniform, hopped on one of his motorcycles, and sped to Kibbutz Alumim, where he battled Hamas terrorists for hours before he was killed.

Gvili had been the last of 251 people kidnapped on October 7 to remain captive, following the return of the rest of the hostages, living and dead, under the current ceasefire. For more than 50 days, he was the only hostage still held in Gaza, amid Hamas’s insistence that it had been unable to locate him, leaving his family and country fearful he might never be recovered.

Gvili’s father Itzik, spoke of the emotions of how it felt to open the coffin that returned to Israel on Monday and touch his son’s body “for the first time in two and a half years, it was well worth it.”

Gvili’s younger sister, Shira Gvili, sobbed over the flag-covered casket at the start of her eulogy before speaking of her friendship with her brother and the unimaginable loss.

“The forest isn’t the same forest, nice clothes don’t feel the same and schnitzel will never taste the same,” she said.

“All the laughter is gone and I’m left with only memories and every motorcycle I see takes me back and sometimes I smile when I see one and sometimes it feels like an arrow to my heart,” she said, referring to Gvili’s love of motorcycles and his collection.

She told her brother about her travels, her part in the struggle to bring his body home.

“In the last month, I went to America, we got to places that I never imagined I’d ever get to,” she said. “I really did everything; I spoke at the UN and Congress and the White House and all of it in English and I did it so that you would come back.”

Following the family, several politicians spoke, each using the opportunity to drive home their agenda.

President Isaac Herzog added a conciliatory tone to the funeral, saying that Israel could slowly begin healing as a nation now that Gvili had returned home.

“An entire nation looks upon you today…and knows: through your path, and through Ran’s path, we must rise from this terrible pain,” said Herzog. “The nation must now rise to the next chapter of our existence as a people. Rise strong, confident in our way; rise hand in hand, believing in our State of Israel — Jewish and democratic — and guarding it with utmost devotion, as Ran guarded it.”

Netanyahu declared in his eulogy that Israel was determined to dismantle Hamas, to dismantle the Gaza Strip, to the applause of the crowd.

Specifying that Gvili killed 14 terrorists on October 7, and was shot twice in his body on that day, Netanyahu warned Israel’s enemies, saying that they should look at Talik Gvili, Gvili’s mother, to know that they will be defeated.

During his eulogy, police minister Ben Gvir called upon all Israelis, naming those from the right and left, religious and secular, Arabs and Moslems and Druze and Circassian, “to destroy the Hamas organization, pPunishment for the terrorists, those who raped our women and killed our children deserve the punishment of death,” he said to a smattering of applause from the crowd.

Chief Rabbi Yosef compared Gvili’s battle on October 7 to that of Jewish rebel leader Simon Bar Kochba, who initiated a rebellion against the Roman Empire in the second century.

Referring to the legend that tells of the bodies of Jewish people not rotting during the Bar Kochba revolt, despite the Romans preventing them from being buried, Yosef said a similar “miracle” occurred on Monday, when Ran “returned intact, whole of body.”

Former hostages were in attendance, including Bar Kuperstein, Omer Wenkert, Segev Kalfon, Avinatan Or and Yosef Chaim Ohana, along with supporters from both the hawkish Tikvah Forum and the larger Hostages Forum, both of the organizations that supported the hostages’ families. The Gvilis belonged to both organizations.

Also speaking at the funeral was Leo Terrell, a representative of US President Donald Trump and chair of the administration’s Antisemitism Task Force.

“I have a message for all of you from the greatest president of my lifetime, and the best friend Israel’s ever had in the White House, Donald J. Trump,” said Terrell, adding that this was his first visit to Israel.

“He is extremely happy that not only Rani is home, but all the hostages are home. I want to relay a message from the President: You have an ally in America, you have a friend in America, you will never fight hate alone because the United States of America stands behind Israel.”

Trump was instrumental in brokering the ceasefire that saw the remaining living and deceased hostages returned to Israel.

Singer Idan Amedi, who recently served another round of reserve duty in Gaza after being severely wounded during earlier fighting in Gaza, and was part of the mission to retrieve Gvili’s body from the Gaza Strip, sang his song, “Nigmar” (It’s Over) at the end of the funeral.

The funeral was held in Meitar’s sports field, the same location used for the community’s weekly Saturday night rally calling for Gvili’s release, and was attended by thousands of attendees, including police officers, neighbors and supporters, aside from Gvili’s family and friends.

Attendees arrived at the funeral in shuttle buses, including high school classes, local teenagers and entire families, many with Israeli flags in hand, standing in silence throughout the eulogies, often applauding after some of the speakers.

The attendees gathered in the streets of Meitar at the end of the funeral, the police officers saluting Gvili’s coffin as his body was brought to burial in the local cemetery, the community in which he was raised.