Eviatar Moshe Kipnis, unavailable since Saturday 7 October after the terrorist attack on Kibbutz Be’eri, has died. He was 66 years old. «Our family is originally from Livorno and, for this reason, we are Italian-Israelis», explains the aunt Alisa Halamit. «That damned Saturday we learned that terrorists were running around the Be’eri kibbutz like ants – he explains –, I immediately thought of Tari and Lilach, and we called». But it was all in vain.
Israel Hamas at war, the news today
The body of Evyatar Kipnis, the Italian-Israeli hostage in the hands of Hamas, has been identified Federico Mellano 17 October 2023
Evyatar Kipnis was her nephew, Tari for her, «I had seen my sister go to the kibbutz, give birth first to her first-born daughter and then Tari. She was the same age as my son Joel.” No one would have expected Kibbutz Be’eri to be so vulnerable, everyone felt safe. Hearing the first explosions they thought they were just bombings. “When we found out what happened, we notified everyone we knew, right down to a cousin who lives in Australia.” And now the news, succinctly. There is still no trace of Evyatar’s wife, Lilach.
After completing his military service he spent three years at sea as a skipper. He had been to Asia and many distant places. Evyatar and Lilach were united by their commitment to others, including the Palestinian children affected near the Gaza Strip. Unfortunately, Evyatar suffered from an autoimmune disease, Guillain-Barrém Syndrome, which forced him into a wheelchair and required a course of treatment to be followed scrupulously. Aunt Alisa had expressed her concerns: without the right medicines she would not have been able to resist imprisonment.
Regarding the Gaza offensive: «We defend ourselves. They said they want to kill us all. It is not true that a second Holocaust is being repeated. We don’t take revenge, we defend ourselves. Nobody hates the Palestinians, but Hamas must disappear.”