Almost two years after he was murdered in Hamas captivity, during a failed operation by the General Staff Patrol to rescue him, Sahar Baruch will be laid to rest tomorrow (Sunday).
Yesterday, Maj. Gen. (res.) Yossi Bachar, who served as deputy commander of the Southern Command in the reserves during the war, revealed the secret that had been hidden - Sahar is his nephew.
In a post he published about a photo of his sister Tami's sons, Bachar wrote: "Tears are choking. Why does all this pain come to Tami, my dear sister? In the photo, Tami's happy days with her four sons - Idan was murdered on Shabbat, Sahar, who came out of the inferno, was kidnapped to Gaza, where on the night of December 8, 2023, he was killed during the failed Sayeret Matkal rescue operation. We will leave it to the unit's personnel to detail what happened.".
The retired major general, whose mother Geula was murdered in the October 7 massacre, added: "And we, we will accompany Sahar, the beloved child, this coming Sunday, to burial in the loess soil of Bari, near Idan. In the same cemetery with Grandma Geula, Naomi, Carmel and Dana and the rest of the dear and beloved people of Bari. The unimaginable cost of the war, and how close Sahar could have been to returning now...
""And yet, even in these moments of frustration and pain, one must admit, there is a huge relief here. We, Tami and Roni and the brothers Guy and Niv, will have a place to cry, a place where Sahar will rest forever. And all thanks to the brave IDF fighters, those who returned from the battlefields and those who did not, who, thanks to their courage in the difficult war, created the conditions for the agreement according to which the kidnapped were returned alive, and as of yesterday evening, our Sahar was returned to us.".
""We will accompany Sahar on Sunday, we will strengthen the parents and siblings and the grieving grandfather Yitzhak. We will wipe away the tears and rise to continue to restore, build and strengthen Bari on the path to the speedy return of the entire community home. It will be good again here in Bari, we will take care of it.".
The major, a resident of Bari, was at home on the morning of October 7. He equipped himself with a weapon from a member of the emergency squad who was not at home, and went out to try to rescue a kibbutz member who had been wounded by terrorist gunfire. Together with another kibbutz member, he fought for hours against the terrorists who had infiltrated the kibbutz.
He then served as deputy to Major General Yaron Finkelman, commander of the Southern Command during the war - until March of this year.
His nephew Sahar was returned to Israel on Thursday, alongside Amiram Cooper, the last remaining member of Kibbutz Nir Oz in Gaza.
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