Members of Kibbutz Alumim on Friday held a gathering to honor Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, who fought Hamas-led invaders at the Gaza border community on October 7, 2023, before he was killed and had his body abducted to the Strip.
The weekly gathering, held at Beit Ariela, the library next to Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, included a call to release Gvili’s body before continuing to the second phase of the Gaza deal.
“Rani doesn’t know this… but he saved the kibbutz and built us a new family,” said Itzik Gvili, Ran’s father. “I come to Kibbutz Alumim often, and the border region is starting to recover and return. God willing, it will grow and flourish.”
The Gvili family spoke about their son and brother in the present tense, noting that until they see his body, they believe he could still be alive.
Gvili, a master sergeant in the police’s Yamam special operations unit, was killed fending off Hamas-led terrorists in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. His body was snatched to Gaza, where it is reportedly held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
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Former hostage Bar Kuperstein, who was abducted from the Nova festival and released from captivity in October 2025, spoke to the gathering about observing Shabbat during captivity and how it offered a kind of stability.
Former hostage Bar Kuperstein at the Friday, January 9, 2026 gathering calling for the release of Ran Gvili’s body near Hostage Square in Tel Aviv. (Courtesy)
“In captivity, Shabbat was the most stable thing I had, as funny as that sounds,” Kuperstein said. “In captivity, there is no day, no night, no sense of time. But the sanctity of Shabbat is something that holds you. I couldn’t pray out loud, so the prayer was inside, quietly, to myself, without anyone hearing. It was the only place where I felt free. It helped me not lose myself and remember where I came from and where I’m going.”
Kuperstein spoke about the necessity of caring for one another, and for the Gvili family, as it experiences the agony of not having their son home.
Tamir Idan, head of the Sdot Negev Regional Council, apologized to the family for the loss of their son, but Itzik Gvili replied that he doesn’t need the apologies as Ran knew what he was doing.
“Rani went there, went to fight,” Gvili said. “He knew where he was going and what he was doing. If we put him back in that same situation, including captivity, he would do it another hundred times — because that’s Rani, that’s who he is. So there’s no need for apologies.”
זאת התמונה האחרונה של רני גואילי, מ-7 באוקטובר.
פצוע, אחרי שעות של לחימה וחיסול של מספר דו ספרתי של מחבלים, הוא המשיך להיאבק על הגנת קיבוץ עלומים – ועל כולנו.
רני לא שאל אם האזרחים שעליהם הגן הם ימנים או שמאלנים. לא חילק אותם ולא קיטלג אותם. הוא יצא, ראשון.
והוא האחרון שעוד לא… pic.twitter.com/WITqxXmOB8
— Gil Dickmann | גיל דיקמן (@gildickmann) January 7, 2026
On October 7, 2023, Gvili, 24, was at home in southern Israel’s Meitar awaiting surgery on his shoulder.
When the onslaught began, he donned his police uniform and went out to fight. He was killed defending Kibbutz Alumim.
Earlier this week, Hamas and the Red Cross resumed searches for Gvili’s body for the first time in almost a month, and nearly three months after Hamas committed to releasing all the remaining 48 hostages, living and dead, within the first 72 hours of the ceasefire that took effect on October 10, 2025. So far, 47 have been returned.
Itzik Gvili, second from right and Talik Gvili, third from right, at a Friday gathering for their son Ran Gvili, the remaining hostage body in Gaza, near Hostage Square in Tel Aviv on January 9, 2026. (Courtesy)
Citing a need to “adjust to the new reality,” the Gvili family announced in December that, as the final hostage family, they had agreed with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum to end the mass rallies that the forum had held on Saturday nights for the past two years.
Instead, the Gvilis attend the pre-Shabbat gatherings that the Kibbutz Movement has held at the Hostages Square on Fridays.
The family has insisted that the October ceasefire deal not move onto its second phase until Gvili is returned.
Phase two would see Israel stage a further withdrawal in the Gaza Strip, and Hamas disarm and cede power to an International Stabilization Force and a Board of Peace chaired by US President Donald Trump.
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