Hundreds pay last respects at the funeral of Israel’s last hostage, Ran Gvili, in Meitar. Among those in attendance are President Isaac Herzog, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Knesset Speaker Amir Ohana, former defense minister Yoav Gallant, National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, Blue and White chair Benny Gantz, and Sephardic Chief Rabbi David Yosef who presides over the funeral.

Itzik Gvili, father of Ran, recited Kaddish over the coffin, saluted and said, “Here, your friends are taking you.” Gvili’s mother kissed the coffin, then went outside the base to embrace citizens who had come to pay their respects.

"With Gvili’s body returned, the nation can now ‘slowly begin’ to heal", President Herzog says in eulogy. “Ran, the hero and the beloved, ‘the last hostage,’ is finally brought to eternal rest, in the soil of home,” Herzog says, telling the Gvili family that “an entire nation accompanied you and all the families of the hostages for hundreds upon hundreds of days.” Gvili’s return “is also a momentous moment for an entire nation,” he continues, saying that “from within the sanctity of this moment, the shattered fragments of our hearts can slowly begin to gather toward healing and repair, which are so desperately needed by us as a people.”

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declares that Israel is determined to achieve its remaining war aim of defeating Hamas and thus honor Ran’s legacy. Israel has succeeded in “bringing all our brothers and sisters home,” the PM said. “This is still not the final word. We are determined… to dismantle Hamas, to dismantle the Strip — and that, too, we will achieve,” he said.

‘I’m the proud mother of Ran Gvili’: Talik Gvili parts from her son. “700 soldiers looked for you and found you, 700 soldiers found you and brought you back,” she said to Israel’s enemies. “You, our enemies, tried to scare us. Look what’s left of you and you’ll see what will be left of you,” she said.

“I imagined you looking at me, and telling me, ‘Don’t cry, you’re proud, you’re proud,'” says Gvili. “Every time I’m tearful, I feel you looking at me, ‘My proud mother!'”

Shira Gvili, the sister of fallen police officer Ran, spoke to the crowd through tears as she eulogized her older brother at his funeral. ‘When Mom entered my room and said it would take time for you to come home, I couldn’t imagine it would take 843 days. Last month, I went to America, we went to places that I never imagined I’d ever get to,” she tells her brother. “I really did everything; I spoke at the UN and Congress and the White House, all of it in English, are you proud of me?”

Ran Gvili is a symbol of Sepharad and a great-grandson of Eduardo Nada, a "protected Spaniard" in Alexandria. Nada was born in 1904, in Egypt. The country was experiencing various political upheavals when he went to the Spanish consulate. He claimed Sephardic origins. He left no doubts to the evaluators. It was enough to hear him speak, mixing Spanish, Portuguese, Greek and Turkish words. The mark of Sefarad was inscribed on all his intriguing person. He did not live in Madrid, nor in any city in that country then plunged into a state of civil war. He had never even set foot in that territory. However, he had a right that he exercised. He wanted to survive the political upheavals that kept shaking Egypt, and he survived. Eduardo would marry Esther Nada, born in 1912. They were the parents of Eliam Nada (1947), who would move to Israel and marry Meir Ziuni (1942). From this marriage was born Tali Ziuni (1970) who married Izaak Gvili (1964). 

For millions of Jews like Eduardo, life has never been easy, and one day, the return of the remains of his great-grandson, Ran Gvili, also came to depend on the diplomatic efforts of a nation from Sepharad, in this case Portugal, whose citizenship he requested. 

On the day he died, Ran rushed out of the house to work, with his shoulder broken in an accident that had occurred weeks earlier. He was a police sergeant. He joined his colleagues to rescue the terrified young people fleeing the Nova music festival and to confront the murderous mob that invaded Israel on October 7, 2023. His life, short though it was, was significant. His family history is the history of a good part of the Jewish people.

Sephardic Chief Rabbi David Yosef eulogizes Ran Gvili, comparing his battle and that of the Israeli nation on October 7, 2023, to that of Jewish rebel leader Simon Bar Kochba, who initiated a rebellion against the Roman Empire in the second century.

Referring to a legend that tells of the bodies of Jewish people not rotting during the Bar Kochba revolt, despite the Romans preventing them from being buried, Yosef says a similar “miracle” occurred on Monday, when Ran “returned intact, whole of body.”

The chief rabbi speaks about the antisemitism sweeping the world.

“God loves us, but the other nations, not so much,” says Yosef. “We’re dealing with antisemitism — we who created, we who want to survive, to live, but the world blames us even though we want to defend ourselves. We have no solution to this antisemitism, but we have to fight it and have to know that they hate us because we’re Jews.”

Yosef says that Jews need to be proud of who they are, “that we’re the chosen people of God, and we’re proud of being God’s nation.”

He calls upon the Israeli people to support the thousands of bereaved families and the orphans, and to “hold them up and support them.”

“You, the Gvili family, united all of Israel around you,” says Yosef.