For nearly a year, Master Sergeant Ori Danino's family members waited for his return from Hamas captivity, offered prayers, and dreamed of the thanksgiving party they would hold upon his return from Gaza. The long months of anticipation ended in heartbreak when the execution of Ori and five other hostages - Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Alex Lobanov and Almog Sarusi shocked the country.
When Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu paid a condolence call to the family, Ori's father, Elhanan told him he must end the division among Israelis and take responsibility for the failings that led to his son's captivity and death.
Shut yourself in your room every day for 10 minutes and think, he said. "Think where God is in your decisions. Leave petty politics aside, without God we have no right to this country. You have been in power for a long time. My son was murdered in a tunnel that you built," he said.
Danino, lives in the Ramot neighborhood of Jerusalem. During the shiva, he heard many stories he did not know about his oldest son, which made him appreciate him even more. "This week, I was amazed by things that became clear to us," he said after the shiva. "He gave himself up for his friends. He thought of others first, his love for others was beyond anything I know."
He received an example of the son's dedication to others from the story of a lone soldier whom Ori knew during his military service. "It turns out that Ori would take leftover food from our Shabbat and give to the lone soldier so he would feel what homemade food was like because the soldier was ashamed to come and stay with other people," he said. "Ori would take this soldier's laundry and wash it with his own without our knowledge all these years."
On October 7, on Simchat Torah, Ori spent time at the Nova music festival with a friend. They were joined by three other friends: Maya and Itay Regev, who were kidnapped and later released from captivity by Hamas, and Omer Shem Tov who is still held hostage in Gaza. Ori and his friend had already managed to escape from the scene of the massacre but Ori decided to return to the inferno to try to save some remaining friends. They were saved, while Ori and the other friends were captured and taken hostage.
"We knew about Ori's courage, but we didn't think that a guy who hears rockets and bullets whistling around him would go back into the inferno to save friends he met a few hours before," Elhanan said. In the afternoon of October 7, the family was informed that Ori was missing, and only after days of uncertainty about his fate, they learned that he had been kidnapped.
Faith helped the father in the difficult days. "We chose a certain way, the way of the sanctification of heaven, to spread our faith that we believe in. In places where they asked us to speak, we spoke. Only faith held us," he shared.
The IDF was close to the six hostages. Did you feel they missed them, or have you not dealt with it?
"We accept the decree of the Holy One, blessed be He. We have been blessed with a holy son and a hero who is now in a holy and pure place. We are in pain, torn, broken but God forbid we blame the security forces, who work night and day to bring every piece of information, especially a dead body or a live hostage, back to his family. We thank them very much for doing everything they could to bring our son home."
'Distance is not an option'
Even when Ori moved away from the ultra-Orthodox lifestyle, the household continued to accommodate and embrace him. For his father, it is important to call on other ultra-Orthodox parents to choose like him, and to maintain a warm relationship with their children who left religious observance. "I would not have spoken if it were not for the elders of Israel who are the ones who guide us and we are disciplined by them. They explicitly said: Children are raised only out of warmth, hugs and love and it doesn't matter what the children's positions are," he said.
He makes sure to convey this message now also through the ultra-Orthodox media. "It is written 'Educate each child according to his way, the way of the boy, not the way of the parents,'" he said. "The way may be twisted, but if we parents want to improve the image of that child, we must continue to embrace and love. It is difficult. He doesn't look like us, he doesn't act like us. But he doesn't have any other parents. Don't think that someone else will do the job better than you. Make an effort, get advice."
Elhanan clarified that: "To distance ourselves, God forbid, is not an option. Ori made a different life from an Ashkenazi Orthodox to a soldier in the 202nd Battalion and he stayed at home. He brought everyone together, and he loved everyone, and he has siblings who behave differently but they are all siblings and love each other. They came to comfort us with classmates who studied with him, and also discharged female soldiers and soldiers with earrings and tattoos. We are all the people of Israel, the same people."
Even when Ori chose to leave yeshiva studies and enlist in the army, he received support from home. "The moment he decided to take part in defending the people and the homeland, we gave him our full backing," testified his father, who works as a butchery inspector in the Jerusalem rabbinate.
Ori's last position in the army was as an IT commander in the 202nd Battalion in the paratrooper brigade. His parents, Elhanan and Einav, chose to remain silent and did not give interviews during the days of captivity, so as not to give information to the enemy about Ori being a combat soldier in the IDF.
When the father was asked about his last conversations with his son, he recalled a chilling message he received from Ori on Yom Kippur Eve: "In recent years, when Ori could not come here and pray with us on Yom Kippur, and would stay in the places where he served; he would ask me on Yom Kippur Eve to sing for him the hymn 'To you, my God, is my passion,' that talks about the separation of the body from the soul and the handing over of the body to the Creator. As far as I was concerned, he did not know what he was saying. When I started to sing the poem, he said: 'No, father , to the end'. It's a very, very long poem. I didn't want him to be up there without the hymn, so I also sang it to him at the funeral."
Ori was 25 years old when he was killed and was the oldest of five siblings; the youngest is due to celebrate her Bbat Mmitzvah soon. His parents hang a photo from Ori's bar mitzvah, in which he is seen wearing tefillin next to the late Rabbi Ovadia Yosef. A few hours after the photo was taken, Ori was seriously injured in a car accident. "We started that morning by praying and putting on tefillin at Rabbi Ovadia, who blessed him. Later, he went out with his mother and grandfather to bring his cousins from Modi'in, and they had a serious accident in which his mother and grandfather lost consciousness. Ori was injured," Elhanan recalled.
"He was brought to Hadassah Hospital, and the doctor who treated him came out to me after an hour and a half and told me: 'The bar mitzvah will not take place today.' He later had a big bar mitzvah with a thanksgiving party," he said, sighing sadly. "This time we didn't get to have a thanksgiving party."
The heated conversation with Netanyahu
Danino opposes the protest signs that call the prime minister a "murderer" and were seen at demonstrations in favor of the hostage release deal, but he criticizes him. He also voiced these points to him in a conversation, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked him for forgiveness that the State of Israel failed to bring his son back alive.
"Out of respect, I won't elaborate on the whole conversation, but it was a very difficult conversation," he shared. "The man has been in power for almost two decades. The empire that was built across the border was built during his term. We started October 7 with horrifying data, ammunition and an underground city as a result of criminal neglect and this is the bitter result. Even now, 48 hours after I met him, I do not believe that anything gets through to this man. I think that my words have fallen on deaf ears. I am neither a statesman nor a military man, but for the sake of other parents and for the sake of the other hostages who are still alive, what happened cannot continue."
Regarding the issue of recruiting the ultra-Orthodox, his opinion is that anyone who does not study seriously in yeshiva should enlist. "Whoever closed the book, let him enlist. There is no exemption for anyone. Did you close the book? Run to the base. Not to the offices, to the battlefield. We have no one else to protect us," he said.
Do you have another important message to convey?
"We couldn't find a single picture of Ori without a smile because he would smile at every person. One day I asked him why he did that, and what was his point. He told me: 'Dad, do you know how much it saves later? You know how many friends did I made because of my smile?' So the message is: first of all open up, then let's discuss issues. When you first open up to your friend, the conversation is different, you're smiling, not out of anger, not to fight."