SA olah faces fresh grief with Popplewell’s burial

South African-born grandmother and former hostage, Channah Peri, has endured unimaginable torment for more than 10 months, a nightmare that began with the horrific events of 7 October. This week, the frail mother would stand over the freshly prepared graves of her two sons, her body weakened by months of anguish.

Grief weighs heavily on her face as she confronts the unthinkable: the final resting places of both her children, side by side, a sorrow no mother should ever have to bear. Her oldest son, Roi Popplewell, 54, was murdered on 7 October, a devastating fact she discovered only after being released from captivity in Gaza in November after 49 harrowing days. He was buried in the centre of the country. His body was moved to Kibbutz Nirim to lie alongside his brother, Nadav, whose body was finally retrieved from Gaza earlier this week in a dramatic military operation along with the bodies of five other hostages.

The Hostages Families Forum said the recovery of the bodies “crucially provides their families with necessary closure and grants eternal rest to the murdered”.

Captured by Hamas terrorists from Kibbutz Nirim alongside her son, British-Israeli Nadav Popplewell, 51, and later released, leaving him behind, Peri, has been trapped in a world of gut-wrenching uncertainty.

Nadav was taken with her on that Black Sabbath. In May, Hamas shared a coerced propaganda clip featuring Popplewell speaking to the camera. It was apparently published weeks after he was killed. Peri and her daughter, Ayelet Svatitzky, held on to any shred of hope that he was alive, but the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) pronounced Nadav dead in June, seven months after Peri’s release.

This week, she faced yet another agonising chapter in her ordeal. After a long and emotional rollercoaster, his body was finally returned to Israel from Gaza.

Svatitzky has fought tirelessly for the return of her brother’s body as well as all the hostages, and has held the fort for her mother since her release, describing the past few months as a “living hell” in which “the heartbreak is indescribable”, and where there’s “no end to sadness, worry, and tears”.

The two wear a pair of matching silver necklaces with the engraved names of Roi and Nadav.

In a Facebook post in May, Svatitzky described her mother as a hero, and thanked Nadav for “saving mommy and for taking care of her in the tunnels”. This was before any news of his whereabouts and condition.

Earlier, she posted a black and white family picture of her brothers as little boys, pleading for the release of the hostages and an end to the suffering. “What’s left of these two children who made a chocolate cake in the small kitchen in our house in Kibbutz Nirim? Graves and memories and endless worry,” she wrote.

For 10 months, her days have been consumed by the “overwhelming” demands of hostage activism, handling things like death certificates, organising funerals, arranging gravestones, and navigating the bureaucracy of relocating her mother and ensuring her medical care.

Svatitzky earlier told the SA Jewish Report that her mother was born Denise Adele Levy in Johannesburg. Though she doesn’t know many details about her mother’s early years, she does know that Peri spent time in Gqeberha, formerly Port Elizabeth, and Cape Town before making aliya as a young woman. Peri and her sister, Leonore Armbruster, now 75 and living in the United States, immigrated to Israel with their late brother, Raymond. Although their family ties to South Africa have become more distant, some relatives have reached out to Svatitzky during this difficult period.

Peri met Svatitzky’s father, Rafi Popplewell, a British-born Israeli, at Kibbutz Nirim. They married, had three children, and later divorced but remained close. Svatitzky and her late brothers hold British and Israeli citizenship.

The IDF recovered the bodies of the six hostages murdered in captivity including Popplewell; Yagev Buchshtab; Yoram Metzger; Haim Peri (no relation); Alexander Dancyg; and Avraham Munder from the Khan Younis area in Gaza.

Five of the six were previously known to have lost their lives. All six are known to have been taken to Gaza alive during the Hamas-led invasion and slaughter in southern Israel on 7 October, and were killed over the course of the 10-month-long war.

Munder, 79, was the only hostage among the six whose death hadn’t already been established. He was abducted from Nir Oz along with three of the others: Peri, 80; Metzger, 80; and Dancyg, 75. Popplewell, 51; and Buchshtab, 35, were taken from Kibbutz Nirim.

With the bodies recovered, the IDF said it would continue to investigate the causes of the men’s deaths including the possibility that some or all of the six were killed by Israeli fire amid military operations in Khan Younis.

In December, Hamas published a video showing Peri, Metzger, and a third hostage alive, and in March, the terror group claimed that the three were killed by Israeli strikes.

It’s now believed that 105 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on 7 October remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.

On Tuesday, 20 August, the military said the operation to extricate the six bodies came after prolonged combat in a built-up area. It said Israeli forces found a 10m-deep tunnel shaft that led to an underground route, along which they neutralised obstructions, blast doors, weapons, explosives, and militants’ hide-outs.

The military said that Israeli forces scanned the route, and noticed that part of the tunnel’s concrete lining was loose. When soldiers removed the lining, they discovered a hidden branch of the tunnel network and found the bodies.

A spokesman for the Israeli military, Lieutenant Colonel Nadav Shoshani, said that the tunnel was under an area previously designated as part of the humanitarian zone of Khan Younis. The Israeli military has shrunk that zone repeatedly as it presses its assault.

The retrieval of the bodies came as United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken continued the diplomatic push in the region for a ceasefire deal that would result in hostages being released in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Frustration has grown in Israel over the months of halting negotiations, and family members of the hostages still in Gaza have led regular protests demanding a deal to secure their freedom.