Shlomo Mantzur’s smile on the hostage posters is almost impossibly big, framed by a long, groomed mustache that gives him the airs of an old entertainer. It’s hard to imagine running into him and not being utterly won over.
In videos of the oldest man violently taken into Gaza on October 7 shared on social media, Mantzur, 85 at the time of his death, was often smiling at his loved ones, including his five children and 12 grandchildren. There’s also the countless children he and his beloved wife Mazal took in throughout the years in their home in Kibbutz Kissufim on the Gaza border, who came from across the country and the world to volunteer there.
He seems so youthful in the videos, riding on scooters, joyfully kissing his beautiful granddaughters, brimming with pride. In one, he shows off a gorgeous project from the woodshop ran in the kibbutz he helped start. In fact, the week before October 7, he was teaching the kids of the kibbutz woodworking. His grandchildren called him grandpa, but all of Kisuffim called him “Saba Shlomo,” Grandpa Shlomo.
On October 7, his beloved kibbutz, named after the beautifully poetic Hebrew word for longing, was desecrated. Terrorists came into his home. They threatened Mazal into giving them the keys to their car, and then she saw that they had handcuffed Shlomo and were dragging him out. He’s an old man, she told them, that’s not the way to treat him. He echoed her words, in his pajamas, without his glasses or hearing aids. Mazal ran away. They dragged him into his car and drove across the Gaza border. It’s now believed that he was murdered that very day.
October 7 wasn’t the first time an angry mob stormed his Jewish home. Mantzur was born in Baghdad. “His name was Salman, but everyone called him Asa’ad,” a video shared by the family states, the Arab name for the happiest and most fortunate man for his easy smiles. As a child, he survived the Farhud, that brutal pogrom enacted against Baghdad’s Jewry in 1941.
“He saw with his very eyes the torture of the Muslim mob of his family and those he knew,” his niece said in an interview. “Horrors the brain refused to process and the hand cannot write. He came here to Israel convinced that nothing bad could befall him.”
“In the Farhud he was with my parents and with his mother and grandmother, and now he’s alone,” his sister, Hadassah, who fought for his return relentlessly last year, lamented.
In a radio interview from today, Hadassah talked about how her brother felt abandoned, trying to sound out warnings about militants at the border. She was filled with regrets about not fighting hard to have his worries heard before that fateful day. “He couldn’t believe that this is something that could happen in our country, when we said never again,” she shared through tears. “That bitter faith chased him. They couldn’t [murder] him in his youth, but they succeeded in old age.”
“He came to Israel when he was 13, and to Kissufim at age 16,” his granddaughter, Yuval, shared in an interview. He fell in love with the kibbutz, and for 70 years, he loved his life there. His neighbors called him “the heart of Kissufim.” You can see that beautiful kibbutz immortalized in the Netflix movie “Kissufim,” shot before October 7, and admire its beauty but also the precarious nature of that life by the border.
Hadassah, who Shlomo called Dasi, described him as a “man who touched everyone, cared for everyone, and respected everyone no matter their age… He’s from a generation of giants, a rare breed. He never left anything behind that wasn’t solved; anything that looked wrong, he took care of and fixed,” she said. He gave so much to Israel, and still had so much to give, so active in the kibbutz and a Nahal paratrooper who volunteered in army bases until his last days — a fact that wasn’t made public because of fear of retaliation against him in captivity.
“He’s the best person I know. He has such a big heart. He’s so giving, helps everyone who needs it. He’s so loved,” Yuval shared. Every time she saw him, she said, she would smile, her mood instantly lifting. His status on the popular messaging app WhatsApp was “I love my family.”
“This is so absurd, finding comfort in having a body, a grave,” Hadassah shared today. “I don’t know if I can call it solace. It’s infuriating that it happened when it shouldn’t have happened. We accept our faith. There is a relief in knowing that we will have somewhere to visit him… that he’s back in the country that he loved so much.”
When news that he was on the list of released hostages came out, his sister Rachel made orange peels in syrup in hopes of seeing Shlomo again. They were also hoping to buy him his favorite pistachio ice cream. But the Mantzur family will not get to give their favorite “saba” his favorite treats. His children won’t get to say the refrain they grew up with — “Ana bahebak,” I love you in Arabic — back to him again. There will be no more kisses on the cheeks with the tickle of his mustache. His wife Mazal will not get the hug she’s so dreamed of.
Three other beautiful smiles were brought back home in boxes yesterday. Ohad Yahalomi, 49 when he was kidnapped, was a father of three, a man who loved nature and studied scorpions, who cared about the environment. He loved his two girls and his sons, and his joy in fatherhood can be seen in the videos that his family shared. He was shot twice on October 7, trying to protect his family by the shelter door that wouldn’t close. His son Eitan was taken into Gaza and held by himself until that first hostage release deal. His two daughters and wife managed to escape, walking four hours back to their home.
Itzik Elgarat was a kind father of two who moved back to kibbutz Nir Oz after his divorce. He was the town’s maintenance man, a soccer fan who loved to kick a ball around and didn’t know how to lose. His last phone call on October 7 was to his brother, Danny, a retired police official. He was trying to bandage his wounded hand, asking him to help fashion a tourniquet. The last thing Danny heard him yelling as Hamas militants entered his home was: “Danny, it’s the end.” Danny fought for him relentlessly, speaking everywhere he could, even going on a hunger strike. Hostages who returned in that first deal told Danny that they saw his brother, but in June of 2024, he got unofficial news that Itzik was no longer alive. When news of his death was made public, Danny shared a bitter poem titled “I Failed.” “You were sacrificed on a political altar,” he wrote of his beloved brother. “They vanquished me with ‘total victory,'” he wrote, alluding to the term Netanyahu uses to talk about military goals in Gaza.
Tzachi Idan will be laid to rest next to his daughter Maayan, murdered while helping him, like Ohad, secure the shelter door. She was 18 years old. Videos of Tzachi, his wife, Gali, and his three other children weeping for their dead sister were livestreamed on his wife’s Facebook account by the terrorists who took over his Nahal Oz home. Tzachi worked in tech, was married to Gali 18 years, and had three daughters and a son. He was a passionate fan of HaPoel Tel Aviv and the family announced that his funeral procession will start at the Bloomfield Stadium where the soccer club played and which he frequented, and people have been urged to wear red, the team’s colors, in his honor.
Despite the late hours of the night on Wednesday, dozens of people gathered with flags to accompany the four men, these four fathers, from Gaza back to Israel for the first time since October 7, not for a joyful reunion, but to be identified by pathologists.
At the Hostages Square this week, Shlomo’s granddaughter Noam remembered his last words to his family. With that sweet comforting energy, he told his daughter, Noam’s aunt, “Everything is going to be OK.”
“And I ask, how will it be OK, and when will it be OK, when he still have 63 hostages in Gaza?” she cried. “Dear leaders, please, fulfill my grandfather’s will, make everything OK.”
