The family of slain hostage Oded Lifshitz said they received news confirming the identity of his body after it was returned to Israel from Hamas captivity, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum Headquarters announced on Thursday afternoon.
Subsequently, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) and IDF confirmed that Lifshitz's body was identified and that he was murdered after being held in captivity by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
We can now confirm that the late Oded Lifshitz was murdered, at the age of 83, in captivity by Islamic Jihad and was brought back to Israel today.We send our deepest condolences to his wife, Yocheved, and to the rest of his family.May his memory be a blessing. pic.twitter.com/ACEjXJz37j
— Israel Defense Forces (@IDF) February 20, 2025
Israel's Institute of Forensic Medicine made a public statement later in the evening confirming that slain hostage Oded Lifshitz's body had been identified and that he was killed over a year ago.
The institute did not address the identities of the other three slain hostages.
"The National Center for Forensic Medicine is working to identify all the murdered and has been mobilized to identify all the hostages who are returning to graves in Israel," the Head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine, Dr. Chen Kugel, said.
"We have been working since this morning to give the families a definitive answer. The institute's employees continue the work of identification," he added.
"This is a difficult moment for the family, for us, for the entire State of Israel. We send our condolences to the family. Of course, we all hope for the return of all the kidnapped," Dr. Kugel concluded.
Lifshitz's body was returned from captivity on Thursday morning, along with three other slain Israeli hostages. His body is the first of the four to be confirmed as identified.
His family expressed their sorrow regarding the news of the identification, saying that they "received with deep sorrow the official and bitter news confirming the identification of our beloved Oded's body."
"503 agonizing days of uncertainty have come to an end. We had hoped and prayed so much for a different outcome," the statement continued.
"Now we can mourn the husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather who has been missing from us since October 7," it added.
"Our family's healing process will begin now and will not end until the last hostage is returned," the statement concluded.
Who was Oded Lifshitz?
Oded Lifshitz was an 83-year-old from Kibbutz Nir Oz. He was kidnapped alongside his wife, Yocheved Lifshitz, 82, from their home. He was shot in his hand and was lying at the edge of his property the last time his wife saw him.
Yocheved Lifshitz was one of the very first hostages to be released on October 24, 2023, after 17 days.
He was also a journalist who had an unclouded vision of what could happen if Israeli-Palestinian divisions festered to a point beyond return.
“When the Palestinians have nothing to lose, we will lose, big time,” Lifshitz wrote some years ago in Haaretz. “The question is, what do we do then?"