By: Fern Sidman – Jewish Voice News

A sea of Israeli flags and solemn faces accompanied Second Lieutenant Hadar Goldin to his final resting place on Tuesday in Kfar Saba, bringing to a close an odyssey of uncertainty that began more than a decade ago. Goldin, who fell in battle during Operation “Protective Edge” in Rafah on August 1, 2014 at the age of 23 and whose remains were long held in Gaza, was returned to Israel after an exhaustive identification process carried out by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine together with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate. The burial — at once intimate and national — crystallized a private family’s grief and a public nation’s determination to account for its missing and fallen.

On Tuesday, VIN News, which closely followed the family’s repeated appeals and the broader campaign for the return of hostages and remains over 4,118 anguished nights, reported from the cemetery that an extraordinary cross-section of Israeli society filled the grounds: bereaved families, uniformed reservists, Givati veterans, local civic leaders, and ordinary citizens who came to pay respects to a young officer whose life had been emblematic of service, devotion and sacrifice.

The ceremony unfolded with austere ritual and heartfelt oratory. Chief of General Staff Maj. Gen. Eyal Zamir addressed the congregation, echoing words the Goldin family has fiercely repeated over the years: “Now we can say Protective Edge is over.” He saluted Goldin’s service and reaffirmed the military’s commitment to bring soldiers home. “With a salute and a bow of the head, we accompany Hadar today on his final journey — which he deserved long ago,” Zamir said, his voice registering the weight of both institutional duty and national sorrow.

Family members — the axis around which the tragedy has revolved — spoke with a mixture of spiritual resolve and raw grief. Leah Goldin, Hadar’s mother, recounted the family’s endurance with striking candor. “Hadar, we’ve been waiting for you for 11 years, a long time,” she told the crowd, her remarks recorded in the  VIN News report. “I have no explanation for how we did it, except that almost every time we fell into despair, someone in the family would jump up and say, ‘What would Hadar say?’” That reframing of grief into a moral compass — invoking Hadar’s imagined responses as a spur to persistence — was a throughline of the family’s public campaign.

Simcha Goldin, Hadar’s father, delivered a moving injunction to the assembled mourners: adopt some trace of Hadar’s character as your own. He spoke of his son’s spiritual readings and small acts of piety, revealing that he had compiled Hadar’s glosses on Mesilas Yesharim into a 300-page book titled How To Build Life. “It was Hadar’s mission to fight evil and bring good to the world,” Simcha said. He urged the crowd to emulate his son’s mixture of courage and humility — virtues Hadar literally embroidered on his weapons case: “Courage and humility.”

The family’s twin, Tzur, and Hadar’s sister Ayelet also addressed the mourners, blending recollection with invocation. Ayelet reminded the crowd that Hadar’s return had meaning beyond the family alone: “I understand that you are not just mine, you are everyone’s. Your return brings everyone meaning, strength, and the victory of light,” she said, as recorded in the VIN News report. The words resonated as an act of communal consolation: in Israel, the recovery of a soldier transcends private bereavement and becomes a national catharsis.

The military dimension of the ceremony was emphasized by the presence of veterans and officers who had participated in the searches, rescues, and operational efforts to locate missing soldiers. Major (res.) Eitan Fond — the Givatayim officer who famously entered the tunnel after Hadar’s abduction and secured crucial evidence that confirmed his fate — stood with fellow soldiers whose testimonies have punctuated the public record of the effort. Fond’s presence, and the account of the tunnel operation, tied the funeral to a protracted campaign of intelligence work, field operations and diplomatic pressure that has stretched across governments and years.

The VIN News report spoke of the carefully calibrated plea issued by the Goldin family prior to the interment: they asked the public to attend and to bring Israeli flags as a mark of solidarity, but to refrain from political symbols. That request reflected the family’s desire to honor Hadar’s memory without instrumentalizing his return for partisan purposes. It was a terse but important attempt to close a chapter that had been politicized at moments over the years.

Government officials and civic leaders joined the eulogies. Prime Ministerial and cabinet-level figures offered their condolences and reiterated the state’s obligation to those captured or missing. In his remarks, Chief of the General Staff Zamir framed the recovery as a moral and operational victory: the long wait and relentless advocacy have been vindicated. “You gave the country everything you could give. A generation of heroes now lives in Israel, carrying the responsibility you fulfilled in your lifetime,” Zamir added, according to the VIN News report.

The funeral also had the characteristic cadence of Israeli public ritual: prayers chanted, Kaddish intoned, the symbolic lowering of a casket into the earth followed by the ritual shoveling of soil by family and comrades. For many attendees, the act of burial was not an end but an overdue, painful resolution. It allowed the family and the nation to complete a cycle of mourning that had been suspended for 11 years by uncertainty, by negotiations, and by intermittent, heart-stopping reports.

Perhaps the most piercing moment came from Hadar’s fiancé, Edna Sarousi, who had worn his engagement ring until her marriage in 2021. Speaking at the graveside, she described the personal toll of eleven years without closure. “I was privileged to enter your family and get to know them,” she said, her voice recorded by VIN News. “Even if I didn’t get to marry you like we both wanted to.” The line encapsulated the intimate, quotidian losses that sit beside grander narratives of national sacrifice.

Finally, the crowd’s response — thousands who came to the cemetery, many waving Israeli flags and standing shoulder to shoulder — was itself a message. For a nation weary from conflict, the burial of Hadar Goldin became an affirmation of communal bonds and a recommitment to the obligation of mutual responsibility. As Goldin’s brother declared in his eulogy, addressing Hamas directly: “Take a good look at the nation that stands before you. Nobody messes with this family. With the Israeli nation. And if you think you are going to hold onto your last hostages, think again because we are bringing them back.”

VIN News framed the funeral not simply as an event of mourning but as an institutional moment: a testimony to persistent advocacy, to the work of the intelligence and defense communities, and to the moral logic that animates Israeli society — that no soldier will be left behind. For the Goldin family, the internment is a closure that is both tender and terrible. For the country, it is a reminder of the costs of war and the stubborn, sometimes painful, work of reclaiming what has been lost.