The American Jewish and pro-Israel community continues to say it won’t forget about the last remaining deceased hostage in Gaza.
Shira Gvili says she’s in the United States to make sure of it.
Gvili, 24, is the younger sister of Israel Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, 24, who Israeli authorities say lost his life from wounds suffered battling terrorists at the entrance to Kibbutz Alumim during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
The last image of him alive shows him on a motorbike driven off by terrorists, with Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the background.
After partying with Shira and friends the night of Oct. 6, Gvili was due to undergo surgery on a broken shoulder on the morning of Hamas’s massacre. Affectionately known to family and friends as “Rani,” he instead insisted on joining his fellow police and military officers on the front lines.
He texted his friends late that morning that he had been shot in the leg. It was his last communication.
The 20 remaining living hostages were freed on Oct. 13, and the bodies of deceased hostages have been sporadically returned since that date. Gvili has yet to come home.
Shira has spent the past few days meeting withpolitical, diplomatic and religious officials to remind them that they said they wouldn’t rest until all the hostages were brought home.
“I showed them that we need to close our circle, and it’s important to us, to our family, to know what happened to Ran on Oct. 7,” she told JNS, still expressing doubts about her brother’s fate in the absence of conclusive evidence of his death.
“We don’t know anything, and we are afraid that they’re going to move to the second phase without Ran,” she said, alluding to phase two of U.S. President Donald Trump’s peace plan for the Gaza Strip. Phase one is only set to complete with the return of all hostages, living and dead.
“And for Am Yisrael, we need him to come home,” she added.
In recent days, Shira has met with Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations; Ofir Akunus, Israeli Consul General in New York; U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.); Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.); and several other members of Congress.
Danon told the U.N. General Assembly on Dec. 18, in Shira’s presence: “This is not a slogan. It is a promise: We will not move forward until we return all the hostages home.”
Shira addressed the media at U.N. headquarters that same day, telling them, “Ran is the last one in captivity. Don’t leave him behind. Stand by us and help us bring him home.”
‘It’s my responsibility now’
Among leaders in the Jewish community, William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, Alan Ronkin, Washington D.C. regional director of the American Jewish Committee and Rabbi Levi Shemtov, executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad), have also hosted Shira, who said she’s met with several more of the alphabet soup-type American Jewish organizations.
“They said they won’t let Trump move to the second phase until Ran has come back, and I hope this is what’s really going to happen, because this is why I’m here now,” Shira told JNS. “They all have an awareness of the situation, and they are very warm. I don’t feel alone.”
While the eastern United States has seen a constant flow of hostage families and released captives over the past year, Shira, who made two such visits last year, told JNS that “it’s not the same now.”
She said “it’s my responsibility now because Ran is the only one who’s left behind, and I think now, it’s all about Ran.”
With Washington, D.C., largely shutting down this holiday week, Shira has a different destination: the Miami area, which will see an influx of Trump administration officials and other influential people visiting the U.S. president. The area is also home to Steve Witkoff, Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East and lead negotiator on Gaza, and where Witkoff has hosted key players on the Israel-Hamas peace plan.
Tammy Gorali, an assistant traveling with Shira, told JNS that they couldn’t mention any specific meetings set up for down south. But, she said that the Gvili family plans to use “any resources and any offers to do whatever they can to bring Rani back. So whoever is willing and wanting to be of help—to talk, to meet—the family is there.”
