Jerusalem’s Mount Herzl Military Cemetery was shrouded in the golden haze of sunset on October 15, 2025, as thousands gathered for a moment both solemn and bittersweet. Just two days after Israel rejoiced over the release of twenty hostages from Gaza, the country turned to mourn and lay to rest the first of its dead returned from the enclave under a fragile ceasefire agreement. The funerals of Captain Daniel Peretz and Guy Iluz, whose stories had become emblematic of the nation’s pain and resilience, marked a day of collective grief and remembrance.
Captain Daniel Peretz, a 22-year-old artillery commander, was killed on October 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led attack that ignited the two-year war in Gaza. His family, who had immigrated to Israel from South Africa when Daniel was thirteen, received notification in March 2024 that his body was being held in Gaza. In the absence of his remains, they held a partial funeral, burying his bloodied uniform. It wasn’t until October 2025, under the terms of a ceasefire, that his journey came full circle and his body was finally returned home for burial. According to The New York Times, the Peretz family was surrounded by fellow bereaved families and the surviving members of Daniel’s tank crew, all bound by the shared trauma of that fateful day.
Among the mourners was Matan Angrest, visibly pale and weak but resolute in his determination to honor his fallen commander. Angrest, himself a recently released hostage and one of the 20 returned alive on October 13, 2025, insisted on leaving his hospital bed to pay final respects. “It was important for me to salute and pay my last respects to my commander Daniel, of blessed memory, who led our heroic battle on that fateful Saturday,” Angrest said in an emotional address, as reported by AP. Yet, he added, “the circle will only be closed” when the remains of the fourth crew member, Sgt. Itay Chen, are also returned and laid to rest in Israeli soil. “I wish he could come back. I’m ready to go to Gaza to bring him back,” Angrest declared, his voice strong despite his evident exhaustion.
The October 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants was a day seared into the national consciousness. According to AP, militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 251 captives, including soldiers and civilians. The violence and chaos of that day left many families in a state of agonizing uncertainty, their loved ones missing, presumed dead or held captive in Gaza.
Earlier on the same day as Captain Peretz’s funeral, another poignant ceremony unfolded in Ra’anana, in central Israel. Guy Iluz, a 26-year-old sound technician, was shot and kidnapped while fleeing a music festival on October 7, 2023. His story, recounted by The New York Times, was one of both horror and fleeting comfort. After being wounded and abducted, Iluz was hospitalized in Gaza. The Israeli military later reported that he died from his injuries due to a lack of proper medical care. At his funeral, his father, Michel Iluz, addressed him at the graveside: “They ordered him to turn around and shot him twice in the back, just for the hell of it.” The pain of loss was tempered, ever so slightly, by the presence of Maya Regev, a freed hostage who had been with Iluz in the Gaza hospital during his final days. “You suffered for a week alone until I arrived,” she wrote on social media, recalling their conversations about “the simplest and purest things in the darkest and most horrific place known to humanity.” Michel Iluz thanked Regev, noting that her presence was a final gift to his son. “Rest, after a two-year journey through worlds we don’t know,” he said.
The return of the bodies was part of a delicate ceasefire agreement. Since October 13, 2025, Hamas militants have handed over ten bodies, out of a total of 28 that the Israeli government claimed were in Gaza at the time of the agreement. The identity of one of the returned bodies remains unclear, and Hamas’s military wing stated on October 15 that it had handed over all the hostage remains it could recover without additional equipment—raising concerns that the truce itself might be at risk, as reported by The New York Times and AP.
The spiritual and psychological weight of these burials cannot be overstated. In Judaism, as in Islam, returning the body to the earth as quickly and intact as possible is considered essential for both the soul’s peace and the family’s healing. “The idea of respecting the dead is intrinsic to the Jewish life cycle,” explained Sharon Laufer, a member of a Jewish burial society and a reserve soldier who prepares bodies of fallen soldiers for burial, in an interview with AP. “Until the body is put in the ground, the soul is not complete, and that’s why it’s so important to us.”
For many families, the inability to bury their loved ones has meant enduring over two years of uncertainty and incomplete mourning. Rabbi Benny Lau, a close friend of the Peretz family, underscored the obligation: “This is our obligation to God, we take the body and return it to the land. The soul belongs to God and returns to God, but the body is our responsibility.” The rituals of Jewish mourning—shiva, the seven-day period of intense grieving, followed by other prescribed observances—bring both spiritual and psychological relief. Dr. Einat Yehene, a rehabilitation psychologist with the Hostages Families Forum, noted that only when all the hostages are back can families and the country as a whole begin to heal from the “traumatic grief” that has gripped them.
The pain of waiting is exemplified by families like that of Sgt. Itay Chen, whose body remains in Gaza. His father, Ruby Chen, described the daily torment: “It’s a bizarre feeling where you start the day anticipating to get the worst phone call that you will in your lifetime, and then feel disappointed when you do not get that phone call.” Others, like Ela Haimi, whose husband Tal was killed defending their kibbutz and whose body is still missing, have tried to maintain hope for eventual closure. “I think he deserves this honor. He went out first, he went knowing I was alone with the kids among terrorists, to protect us. And he did,” she told AP.
As the ceremonies concluded, there was a sense that, despite the deep pain, the act of burial offered a measure of peace. In her eulogy at Captain Peretz’s funeral, his sister Adina said, “You can finally rest in the Holy Land.” Shelley Peretz, closing the three-hour service, reflected on the significance of her son’s return: “We have you home now where you belong.”
The return and burial of Israel’s hostages—both the living and the dead—has become a national rite of passage, a way to reckon with grief and begin the slow process of healing. Yet, as long as some families remain in limbo, the wounds of October 7, 2023, will not fully close. The hope, quietly echoed in the prayers of mourners and the words of survivors, is that all who are lost will one day come home.