Murdered hostage Tsachi Idan was returned to Israel on Wednesday, his family confirmed via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
Idan 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 on October 7. Idan’s 18-year-old daughter, Mayaan, was killed in the massacre.
“We are still waiting for much-needed certainty, which we can only receive 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 – she was waiting for her husband.
“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, Idan’s wife discussed how her children’s perspectives have changed since October 7.
“We talk about Maayan all the time,” she said. “They sometimes break down and cry, missing their sister.”One of her children, she said, went into her room in the middle of the night crying and saying that “she wanted her daddy back.”“What can I say? What answer is there? I can’t bring her dad back,” the mother 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 she called black Saturday.
The terrorists broke into their home on the kibbutz, shot Maayan to death, and then kept the family at gunpoint for hours, streaming live from Idan’s wife’s phone to her Facebook account.
“I was in Tel Aviv,” Idan’s mother 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 hostage.“For us, that day has never ended,” his mother said. “We live in a perpetual nightmare. My granddaughter was killed and 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,” she said at the conference.