Six days after the October 7 Hamas attack, Amir and Osnat Zini were told that their son, Nirel, had been murdered with his partner, Niv Raviv, at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. After the funeral, they discovered another blow, his head had been severed and has still not been found. The family says it has spent nearly three years trying to locate the remains so he can be buried in full, but no official body has taken responsibility.
In an interview on ynet studio, Amir said, “At the burial we did not know. Maybe there were feelings.” He added, “They made me feel as if he had been burned. I did not know that something of him had been taken, that part of the person, the part that is the essence of a human being, was taken.” Osnat said, “You feel as if he was murdered again,” describing the situation as a sense of betrayal amid chaos.
The parents said they have approached many authorities, but each one has pushed the matter to another. “We feel alone. The struggle has suddenly become ours,” Osnat said, adding that private initiatives and good people have helped, even though the case is “completely national, not private.” She said they cannot do it alone and should be told, “Parents, rest, let us do the work.”
Amir said the family began searching around their home and widened the effort to rule out locations, but cannot go toward Gaza themselves. He said, “The system did not see this as a mission,” adding, “We will not allow there to be a difference between one head and another.” Osnat appealed directly to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying she has voted for him in every election and wants a few minutes with him to ask him to help order the work to be done. Nirel, a former Givati officer who was seriously wounded in 2015 near Hebron and later returned to service after leaving a hospital bed, served as a platoon commander and later in several other command roles before ending 10 years of service as a major.
