Murdered hostage Tsachi Idan was returned to Israel on Wednesday night, his family confirmed via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Tsachi was on the list of 33 hostages to be released in the first stage of a hostage-ceasefire deal. He was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz as his 18-year-old daughter, Mayaan, was murdered on October 7.
"We are still waiting for the much-needed certainty, which we can only receive after his arrival in Israel and after all necessary examinations are conducted by the authorized state authorities," his family said in a statement on Wednesday.
Speaking to CNN in August 2024, Idan’s wife, Gali, said she had not been to her daughter's grave and was waiting for Tsachi.
“I need to go and see her,” she said. “But I can't. I need Tsachi to be here. We need to do it together. He needs to grieve with me. We need to hold each other through this."
In the interview, Gali discussed how her children’s perspectives have changed since October 7.
“We are talking about Maayan all the time,” she said. “They are sometimes breaking down and crying and missing their sister."
One of her children, she noted, went into her room in the middle of the night crying and saying that “she wants her daddy back.”
“What can I say? What answer is there? I can't bring her dad back,” Gali said. “I need the government to bring Tsachi back alive. He was taken alive. He needs to be brought back alive.”
In June 2024, Idan’s mother Devorah Idan addressed the crowd at The Jerusalem Post Annual Conference, and described her family’s experience on what became known as Black Saturday.
The terrorists broke into the building at the kibbutz, shot Maayan, and kept the family at gunpoint for hours, streaming live from the phone of Gali on her Facebook account.
“I was in Tel Aviv,” Devorah said. “We saw what was happening, we watched for hours. We saw the children crying, asking the terrorists why they killed their sister.”
Idan was later taken away.
“For us, that day has never ended,” she said. “We live in a perpetual nightmare. My granddaughter was killed, my son was kidnapped. He did not get to go to her funeral. He did not get to mourn for her. I came all the way from Israel to ask for help.”
Nahal Oz community waiting for their members to return
The head of Nahal Oz’s community, Michal Magen, published in June 2024 a plea to bring home the hostages:
“Two men who were taken from their homes so cruelly, whose families cannot live normally, yet still get up each and every morning with unfathomable strength, to fight, scream, and give a voice to Tsachi and Omri whose voices are lost deep in the tunnels of Gaza, so close to home yet still so far.
It is unimaginable, unforgivable, and unbearably painful.
We have no other country. We love you, our homeland – please come back to us.
Tsachi and Omri, hold on, we are all waiting for you, all of us at Nahal Oz.”
Jerusalem Post Staff contributed to this report.