Last Israeli hostage returned home before International Holocaust Remembrance Day 

Israeli defense forces reportedly located the remains of the last Israeli hostage from the Oct. 7 Hamas attack and returned him to Israel on Monday, one day before International Holocaust Remembrance Day. 

Staff Sgt. Ran Gvili, an Israeli police officer, confronted Hamas terrorists near Kibbutz Alumim on Oct. 7, 2023. The terrorists killed Gvili, who was 24, and later abducted his body to Gaza, according to Fox News. 

“Thank you to all those involved in the operation to bring Ran home. This was an operation of immeasurable importance in fulfilling the sacred obligation to redeem captives,” Israeli President Isaac Herzog said. “After many difficult years, for the first time since 2014, there are no Israeli citizens held hostage in Gaza. An entire nation prayed and waited for this moment.” 

The Israel Defense Forces located Gvili’s body buried in the al-Batesh cemetery in northern Gaza after the Shin Bet, Israel’s security agency, obtained information on his whereabouts from a captured Islamic Jihad terrorist, The Jerusalem Post reported. Israeli police, the IDF, rabbinic advisers and experts at the L. Greenberg Institute of Forensic Medicine confirmed Gvili’s identity, according to the report. 

Gvili’s family will hold a funeral Wednesday in his hometown of Meitar. 

The return of Gvili’s remains marks the end of Israeli hostages in Gaza and continues the implementation of President Donald Trump’s 20-point peace plan. Under the plan, Israel will begin a “limited reopening of the Rafah Crossing for pedestrian passage,” Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement Sunday, according to Fox News. 

Israel is also expected to return 15 Palestinian bodies to Hamas as part of the agreement, although authorities have not indicated when those returns will occur, The Jerusalem Times reported. 

Steve Witkoff, Trump’s Special envoy for peace missions, said Gvili’s return marked “a historic day.” 

“Now, all 20 living hostages and all 28 deceased hostages in Gaza have been returned to their families – a monumental, historic feat that few thought was possible,” Witkoff wrote in a post on X. “This closes a painful chapter for many and paves the way for a new future that can be defined by peace, not war, and prosperity, not destruction. It’s a new day in the Middle East, and President Trump, myself and the entire team are committed to sustained peace and prosperity for all in the region.” 

Witkoff and other U.S. officials met with Netanyahu on Saturday to implement the second phase of Trump’s Gaza peace plan, which he described as “constructive and positive.” 

To mark the end of Israeli hostages in Gaza, Netanyahu removed a yellow pin symbolizing remembrance of the captives. 

“We all wore the pin, and now that the mission is complete, the time has come to remove it. For ‘the sons have returned to their borders, and the daughters have returned to their borders,’” he said, quoting the biblical Book of Jeremiah, according to The Jerusalem Post. 

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee also removed his pin, which he called a “sign of solidarity with the hostages.” 

“I’m not going to keep this,” Huckabee said in a video posted on X. “I don’t want to keep it because it’s a reminder of something I’d just soon forget: of the torture and the horrific things that happened to people that should never have happened. So now that I take it off, I will get rid of it, and I pray I never see it again. And I pray that never again will an Israeli ever have to wear a pin that makes them think about someone taken hostage. May everyone be free forever.” 

Huckabee and millions of Israelis removed the pins one day before Jan. 27, the 81st anniversary of the 1945 liberation of Auschwitz, a Nazi German concentration camp. 

“Today, we mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day,” the IDF said in a post on X. “We remember the 6 million victims murdered, honor the survivors, and carry the promise of never again.” 

The Auschwitz Museum also issued a reminder that genocide is preceded by gradual hatred. 

“Auschwitz was at the end of a long process,” the museum said in an X post. “We must remember that it did not start from gas chambers.  

“This hatred was gradually developed by humans – from ideas, words, stereotypes and prejudice through legal exclusion, dehumanization and escalating violence … to systematic and industrial murder. Auschwitz took time.” 

(Image credit: X/NaoMagid)