Godard, 73, was eulogized by family members, friends and President Isaac Herzog. Singer Ivri Lider performed \u201cI Was Lucky to Love,\u201d and Godard\u2019s brothers Yossi and Eli recited Kaddish. Mourners placed the EuroCup basketball trophy won by Hapoel Tel Aviv on his grave.<\/p>\n
Godard\u2019s return came 769 days after he was taken into Gaza. Kibbutz Be’eri, where he lived, was one of the communities hit hardest in the Oct. 7 assault.<\/p>\n
His daughter Mor said she had imagined the funeral \u201cdozens of times,\u201d describing the pain of waiting more than two years to bury her father and criticizing the government\u2019s decision a day earlier not to establish a state commission of inquiry into the attack. She apologized to her father for what she described as the state\u2019s failure to protect him and said \u201cyou didn\u2019t deserve to lie for 769 days in the streets of Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n
Her sister Bar thanked the IDF troops involved in recovery efforts and vowed to continue pushing for an independent inquiry. She said she had hoped her father would \u201cjump out from the side and burst out laughing,\u201d recalling a childhood memory of him hiding near the kibbutz gate during his security shifts.<\/p>\n
Godard\u2019s son Goni spoke of missing his father for more than two years and apologized for not being able to save him and his mother, who was also killed on Oct. 7. He said his father\u2019s hugs had given him \u201chope\u201d and a sense of security.<\/p>\n
Herzog, addressing the mourners, apologized on behalf of the state \u201cfor not being there to protect you in those moments of darkness\u201d and for the long delay in bringing Godard home. He said the call for a full investigation into Oct. 7 was a \u201cmoral and ethical cry\u201d and essential for Israeli society to heal.<\/p>\n
Godard was buried beside his wife in the Be’eri cemetery, a place his family said he loved deeply.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Godard, 73, was eulogized by family members, friends and President Isaac Herzog. Singer Ivri Lider performed \u201cI Was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138863,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-138862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138862"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138862\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}