You have commented 358 times on Rantburg.

Your Name
Your e-mail (optional)
Website (optional)
My Original Nic        Pic-a-Nic        Sorry. Comments have been closed on this article.
Bold Italic Underline Strike Bullet Blockquote Small Big Link Squish Foto Photo
-Obits-
Oded Lifshitz, hostage slain by Islamic Jihad, was journalist and peace activist
2025-02-21
How Hamas treats its friends.
[IsraelTimes] Lifshitz, among Nir Oz’s founders, defended expelled Bedouins, reported on infamous massacres of Palestinians by Israel-backed militias, and drove sick Gazans to Israeli hospitals

Oded Lifshitz, the hostage whose body was returned on Thursday to Israel, was a veteran journalist, long-time defender of Paleostinian rights, and a founder of the kibbutz where he lived and was kidnapped.

He was taken hostage, aged 83, from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz by Paleostinian snuffies during Hamas
..always the voice of sweet reason...
’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel alongside his wife Yocheved Lifshitz, 85.

They were among 251 people taken hostage that day, after thousands of Hamas-led snuffies invaded southern Israel from the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
Strip, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparking the subsequent war.

Yocheved Lifshitz was released 16 days later, for what Hamas called "humanitarian reasons."

Interviewed on Israel’s Kan public broadcaster on Wednesday, she said her husband had "fought for the Paleostinians his whole life — they betrayed him and took him to hell."

In a long career with the now defunct, left-leaning newspaper al-Hamishmar, which was associated with the kibbutz movement, he defended Paleostinian rights and advocated for peace.

In 1972, he defended Bedouins who were expelled from the Sinai Peninsula by Israeli authorities.

A decade later, during the Lebanese civil war and Israel’s invasion of Leb
...The Leb civil war, between 1975 and 1990, lasted a little over 145 years and produced 120,000 fatalities. The average length of a ceasefire was measured in seconds. Only one of those statements is an exaggeration....
, he was one of the first journalists to report on the Sabra and Shatila massacres in which Israeli-backed Christian militias killed between 800 and 2,000 Paleostinians in Beirut refugee camps.

More recently, Lifshitz, an Arabic speaker, had been actively involved for years with Road for Recovery, an organization that helps Paleostinians receive medical treatment in Israel.

According to his family, he would drive weekly to the Erez crossing on the Gaza Strip border to pick up sick Paleostinians and transport them to Israeli hospitals.

In his free time, the father of four, grandfather, and great-grandfather played the piano and looked after his garden, where he planted cacti, according to Kibbutz Nir Oz. Lifshitz was among the community’s founders in 1955.

Yizhar Lifshitz, Oded’s son, told Channel 12 on Thursday that the family had feared for the elderly hostage’s life for a long time before receiving final confirmation on Thursday upon his body’s return.

"Members of our community are still inside [Gaza], some of them dead, some of them chained and starved. We have to return all of them now," Yizhar added.

According to the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, who identified the hostage’s remains on Thursday, Lifshitz was slain in captivity more than a year ago. He was held by the Paleostinian Islamic Jihad
...created after many members of the Egyptian Moslem Brotherhood decided the organization was becoming too moderate. Operations were conducted out of Egypt until 1981 when the group was exiled after the assassination of President Anwar Sadat. They worked out of Gaza until they were exiled to Lebanon in 1987, where they clove tightly to Hezbollah. In 1989 they moved to Damascus, where they remain a subsidiary of Hezbollah...
terror group.

In a radio interview, the hostage’s son said, "We knew from someone who was released from captivity in the first deal [in November 2023] that she was with him for two weeks, in an apartment in [the southern Gaza city of] Khan Younis, through Day 20 of the war.

"We know he was sick, and that he was shot in his arm when he was holding the handle of the safe room [on October 7]," Yizhar added, referring to the reinforced room in Israeli homes that is meant to keep occupants safe from rocket attacks. "He was not in a good state."

His grandson, Dekel, told Channel 12 that the family believes he died several weeks after being taken hostage and that his grandfather, who suffered from high blood pressure and needed daily medication, may have succumbed to the harsh conditions of his captivity and lack of treatment.
Related:
Oded Lifshitz 01/06/2025 Hamas said to okay list of 34 hostages to be freed, but refuses to detail who’s alive; Saudi outlet claims to have the list

Posted by:trailing wife

00:00