'My heart breaks until he is home': a widow's plea for the return of her husband's body

The young wife of a kibbutz worker killed fighting Hamas hopes peace will give her a chance of closure at last

- Stephen Armstrong

At 6.29am on 7 October 2023, Hamas launched a barrage of more than 1,000 rockets at Israel. They were mainly aimed at military bases, and initially Ela Haimi had wanted to stay in bed. Three weeks previously, she and her husband, Tal Haimi, had found out she was expecting their fourth child. She was tired. But he insisted they head for their safe room with their 10-year-old twins and seven-year-old son.

Their young family would pay a terrible price for the events of that day.

Tal, 41, was a mechanical engineer on the agricultural kibbutz Nir Yitzhak. He was one of the community’s pillars of strength, always the first to lend a hand.

“He was not a hero or a violent man,” says Ela over the phone from their house. “He was a simple person. We were a regular family. It was inevitable he would volunteer to protect people. He just wanted to protect us.”

The kibbutz, in the northwestern Negev, was established in December 1949 by Holocaust survivors and is affiliated with the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement, born from a socialist party that rejected the idea that Israel should be a Jewish state in favour of sharing the land with Palestinians and Jews equally. It has just over 500 residents, and Tal was third generation, related to the founders.