Six days after October 7, Amir and Osnat Zini were told that their son, Nirel, had been murdered along with his partner, Niv Raviv, at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. After the funeral, the parents were dealt another blow when they learned that Nirel had been beheaded and that his head had never been found.
Since then, Amir and Osnat have been fighting to bring their son to a complete burial. But they say they have found themselves alone, with the authorities that are supposed to help them passing responsibility from one to another.
“We didn’t know at the burial. Maybe there were feelings,” Amir said. “They made me feel as though he had been burned. I didn’t know that part of him had been taken, abducted — the human part of him, the part that is the whole essence of a person.”
Osnat added: “You feel as if he was murdered again. But this time, at least in my feeling, not by evildoers and terrorists you know how to point a finger at. It feels like a kind of deception. I know there was insane chaos. I can understand that, I am trying to understand.”
The parents are unwilling to give up, but say no official authority is helping them locate remains that could help them find closure.
“We feel alone. Suddenly the struggle has become ours,” Osnat said. “There are good people and private initiatives that have joined us in our pain — and it is not private pain, it is entirely national — and they are simply trying to help. But yes, we appealed to many officials, from top to bottom, and everyone passed responsibility to someone else.”
Osnat said she and her husband cannot do it alone.
“They should be telling us, ‘Mom and Dad, rest — let us do the work,’” she said. “A father should not have to be on his knees, digging with his hands, together with good people who want to help, searching for bone fragments and sending them to the Abu Kabir forensic institute. My children and Amir were exposed to very, very difficult things.”
Amir went on to describe how, for nearly three years, the family has continued searching, and voiced frustration that they have been left on their own.
“We started searching around the house and expanded the area to rule out locations,” he said. “We can’t go toward Gaza. The system did not see this as a mission and did not define it as a mission. I will just emphasize: There are hostages who were defined as hostages, and that is what was returned. It is hard for me to say this sentence, but we will not allow there to be a difference between one head and another. Period. The head of Nirel, who gave his life to the state in his lifetime, will not be abandoned. The terrorists took his head to boast.”
His parents are fighting to bring him to a full burial; Nirel Zini
(Photo: Courtesy of the family)
On October 10, 2015, two and a half weeks before his 23rd birthday, Nirel Zini, then an officer in the Givati Brigade, was critically wounded during an operational activity in Hebron. But that did not stop him. Even before he had recovered from his wounds, after one of his soldiers was stabbed in a terror attack in Jerusalem, he fled the hospital and returned to IDF service.
He served as a platoon commander in Givati, deputy company commander in the Bardelas Battalion, later as commander of a forward command company and commander of the mobility company in the Paran Brigade. After 10 years of service, and because of the severe injury that had accompanied him since 2015, he was ultimately forced to end his military service with the rank of major.
“I am not getting into politics now,” Osnat said. “But in every election I voted for Benjamin Netanyahu, and I am asking him to choose two minutes of his day. I want to come to him and tell him this face to face: I need his help. He should simply ask whoever needs to do this work to do it.”
“Whenever he tells me, I will come,” she added. “I will come, and I truly want to say this to him, as a mother to a father, and tell him, ‘Please, help me. Help us. Help our family.’ This child gave his soul to the army, gave to his people, to this country. I am truly asking for your help. We cannot do this alone. Anyone who can help us, we are begging you, please help us with this.”