Ilan Weiss, one of the Hungarian-citizen Israeli hostages, was declared dead, his community, the Beeri kibbutz, announced on Monday.
Ilan Weiss had been listed as missing since the terrorist attack by the Islamist Hamas organization on October 7th, but it was announced on Monday that he had already died on the “Black Saturday” that caused the outbreak of the Gaza war.
Weiss, 56, left his home in the Beeri kibbutz next to the zone on the morning of the massacre to join the kibbutz’s emergency response team. His family had not heard from him since 7:15 that morning. His wife, Siri, and daughter, Noga, were captured and held hostage in the Gaza Strip, but were released on November 25th as part of a ceasefire brokered by Qatar and the United States between Hamas and Israel.
Ilan Weiss’s two older daughters, Meital and Majan, lived in an independent student apartment in the kibbutz, where they survived the attack by locking themselves in their shelter for 12 hours until the Israeli soldiers arrived.
He was a well-known and respected man in his community, which he loved so much, the kibbutz said in a statement announcing the man’s death. The death of Ilan Weiss was established by an investigation by the Israeli Institute of Forensic Medicine.
Photo: Ilan Weiss
