Military representatives on Saturday morning notified the family of hostage Eliyahu Margalit that his body had been returned to Israel by Hamas the night prior and identified by forensic experts.
Known by his nickname “Churchill,” Margalit, 75, was murdered by Hamas terrorists at the stables in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and his body was kidnapped. He had been responsible for the cattle at the kibbutz for many years. His daughter, Nili Margalit, 40, was also kidnapped on October 7, and was released from Hamas captivity on November 30.
The casket with Margalit’s remains was collected by the Red Cross from Hamas in southern Gaza’s Khan Younis on Friday night, and then transferred to Israel Defense Forces troops who brought it out of the Gaza Strip.
The casket was inspected by the army, then draped in an Israeli flag and honored in a brief ceremony led by a military rabbi.
Police escorted the casket to the Abu Kabir forensic institute in Tel Aviv where forensic experts worked to identify the remains and determine the cause of death. Several hours later, the body was identified as belonging to Margalit, and IDF representatives notified his family.
“Our beloved Eli has returned home, 742 days after he was murdered and kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. We thank the people of Israel and the Hostage Families Forum for their support in the long struggle for his return, and promise that we will not stop or rest until the last of the hostages is returned for burial in Israel,” the family said in a statement.
“Alongside the grief and the understanding that their hearts will never be whole again, Eliyahu’s return brings some measure of solace to a family that has lived in unbearable uncertainty and doubt for over two years,” the Hostage Family Forum said in a statement.
IDF troops salute over the casket containing the body of slain hostage Eliyahu Margalit, in the Gaza Strip, late October 17, 2025. (Israel Defense Forces)
With Margalit’s body returned, 18 bodies of dead captives remain held in the Gaza Strip after 28 were there at the start of the current ceasefire.
Israel has accused Hamas of withholding at least some of the bodies deliberately, while the terror group insists that it cannot locate them due to the level of destruction in Gaza.
Hamas said that the body it handed over late Friday — which it did not identify — had only been retrieved that day. Footage from earlier Friday showed Hamas operatives using heavy machinery to dig in the Hamad Town residential complex in Khan Younis.
People and members of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) watch as Palestinians use an excavator to dig deep into the ground, reportedly searching for bodies of hostages, in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 17, 2025 (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
Murdered at stables at Kibbutz Nir Oz
Eliyahu Margalit is survived by his wife, Daphna, children Noa, Danny, and Nili, and three grandchildren.
Loved ones reported that he left his home early on the morning of Saturday, October 7, 2023, to feed his beloved horses in the kibbutz stable and that the horses were also taken along with him. Eliyahu was responsible for the kibbutz’s cattle for many years.
אלי מרגלית ז״ל המכונה צ׳רצ׳יל היה מגדל הבקר המיתולוגי של קיבוץ ניר עוז.
מדי סבב לחימה מול עזה היינו מגיעים אליו לבדוק מה שלום הפרות.
742 ימים אחרי שנרצח ונחוץ מניר עוז- הלילה הושבה גופתו מעזה. הנה קטע מכתבה שעשינו עימו בעופרת יצוקה ב-2009 כשעוד התבדחנו על המצב. יהי זכרו ברוך pic.twitter.com/u8PPUSgXTT
— Zion Nanous (@zionnenko) October 18, 2025
Sivan Klingbail, the editor-in-chief of The Marker, who grew up on Nir Oz and had interviewed Margalit, described him as “always wearing work clothes and boots, pulling a feed cart, tending to a sick calf — seven days a week.”
Klingbail wrote that Margalit arrived on the kibbutz in 1969 with a youth group, and ever since then raised cattle, overseeing the herd’s expansion from around 50 calves to 5,500 a year at its peak.
Eliyahu Margalit, who was murdered at Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, and his body abducted to Gaza. His body was returned on October 17, 2025. (Hostages Families Forum)
Gilad Sharon, the son of late prime minister Ariel Sharon, wrote in Ynet in December 2023 about his decades-long friendship with Margalit, built after he took over his father’s ranch in the south.
“We met years ago. He was the most prominent cattle breeder in the country, and we got the calves to start our herd from him,” wrote Sharon. “There was an instant connection. Despite the gap in our ages, we became soulmates. He knew I would do anything for him, and I knew it was mutual.”
Sharon said that aside from Margalit’s wife, “everyone called him Churchill. He wouldn’t even turn around if you called him by any other name.” Margalit was “something like a western Negev version of Zorba the Greek. Everyone was beguiled by the man who was nothing but love for animals and the innocent heart of a child inside a large frame with an unkempt beard.”
He wrote that “Churchill” died doing one of the things he loved most, feeding his beloved horses: “The whole kibbutz was in flames, with terrorists everywhere, and Churchill went to the stables instead of staying with Daphna and his granddaughter Romi in the secure room in their home. There he was slaughtered by the barbarians, next to the horses he loved. He just couldn’t let them go hungry.”
Netanyahu’s office sends condolences
A statement issued by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office on Saturday said “the Government of Israel shares in the deep sorrow of the Margalit family and all the families of the fallen hostages.”
The PMO said that Israel was “determined, committed, and working tirelessly” to bring back all of the dead hostages for burial, adding that Hamas is “required to fulfill its commitments to the mediators and return them as part of the implementation of the agreement.”
An armed Palestinian man looks on as an excavator is used to dig deep into the ground, reportedly searching for hostage bodies in Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip on October 17, 2025 (Omar AL-QATTAA / AFP)
The military said that it “continues to devote all efforts to the return of the fallen hostages, and is preparing for the continued implementation of the agreement.”
“Hamas is required to fulfill its part of the agreement and make every necessary effort to return the fallen hostages to their families for proper burial,” the IDF added.
