Ravid Chaim Gez, the infant son of terror victim Tzeela Gez, was buried on Thursday evening, hours after succumbing to his wounds sustained in the shooting attack that claimed his mother’s life two weeks ago.
Tzeela had been on the way to the hospital together with her husband, Hananel Gez, to deliver the baby when a terrorist opened fire on their vehicle in Samaria. Tzeela was fatally wounded, dying in the hospital shortly afterwards. The medical team managed to deliver the baby by emergency C-section, but he had suffered severe oxygen deprivation.
Despite the efforts by Schneider Children’s Medical Center, he stayed in critical condition and never regained consciousness. Ravid Chaim was buried next to his mother at Jerusalem’s Har HaMenuchot Cemetery.
At the funeral, Hananel demanded that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu take concrete steps to prevent Palestinian terrorist attacks.
“I ask the prime minister and the Knesset to do everything so that there will be a 100% transfer here and that this cancer that is eating us from the inside will no longer be here,” the bereaved father said, calling for the expulsion of all terrorists from the Judea and Samaria region.
“Bibi Netanyahu, you need to take command of these matters. Don’t listen to the European Union, to the whole world—not even to Trump,” Hananel added. “No country would allow these animals, who murder women on their way to the delivery room, to remain alive.”
“Stop listening to the whole world—and listen to the people who elected you to protect us,” he urged. “We need to wake up and let this be the last day that there are attacks in the Land of Israel.”
Hananel said Netanyahu should continue to expand Jewish settlements in “every inch of the country,” halt the negotiations with Hamas terrorists in Gaza and stop humanitarian aid to the coastal enclave.
“They murdered my wife because she was Jewish; that’s the first thing I shouted at the hospital at all the Arabs there after the attack—if I had married an Arab woman, this wouldn’t have happened. But I am proud of what I did, and I don’t regret anything, because even in the pain, it is God. He is the one who gave us Tzeela and Ravid alive, but chose to take them, and we will deal with that,” the mourning father told attendees.
“Ravid Chaim, you are not only the holy child of your mother Tzeela and your dear father Hananel, you will forever be a holy child of the entire people of Israel,” said Yossi Dagan, head of the Samaria Regional Council.
“We came to ask forgiveness—as a community, as a country, as a people—that we failed to prevent this disgrace,” the regional leader added. “We expect the government to turn the tables on these murderers, their supporters and those who send them, and to reverse this equation 180 degrees, so that murdering Jews in Israel is no longer worthwhile.”
Dagan concluded his remarks with a vow: “We will not break. We will never break. We will establish a new community in your names—Ravid Chaim and Tzeela — so that your light not only does not fade but shines even brighter through settlement, love and goodness.”
‘Great sorrow and pain’
Before the funeral, a circumcision was performed for the slain newborn. The unusual procedure was conducted by his grandfather, a rabbi, who had traveled to Israel for the birth. Due to the baby’s critical condition, it had not been possible to circumcise him at eight days.
Earlier on Thursday, Netanyahu responded to the news of Ravid Chaim’s death by expressing his “great sorrow and pain.”
“There are no words that can comfort the murder of a newborn baby along with his mother,” Netanyahu stated. “The heroism of the pioneers of settlement in Judea and Samaria, and their dedication, is what will defeat all our enemies. Earth does not cover their blood.”
About a week after the shooting, the Israel Defense Forces confirmed it had eliminated the killer, Nael Samara, in a counter-terrorism operation in the Palestinian village of Bruqin, just outside the Gez’s hometown.