(JEWISH GROUP) The Hostage I Knew (Oded Lifshitz -- peace activist returned in a coffin)
Oded Lifshitz came home to Israel, 503 days after his abduction to Gaza, in a coffin.
His return does not bring closure. For many of us in Israel, rather, it is the occasion of anguish and fury. And it is a call for us to contemplate the demand on the living made by the dead.
Oded’s coffin entered Israel on Thursday with three others. Two contained the bodies of the Bibas children: Kfir, who was 9 months old when he was kidnapped by terrorists from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and his brother, Ariel, who was 4. A fourth coffin held the body of a woman who was supposed to be Shiri Bibas, their mother, but turned out not to be. A day later, the Palestinian Mujahideen Brigades, the small terrorist group that had apparently held her, delivered the correct corpse, and Hamas sent it to Israel.
The initial delivery of the wrong body may have been a mistake, or one more means of inflicting pain on the enemy—the latest in a long chain that began with the kidnappings.
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