Gil Buyum

Gil Buyum, 55, and his son Inbar “Buri” Buyum, 22, were both killed on October 7 trying to repel a Hamas invasion of Kibbutz Be’eri.

After a long wait, their bodies were finally recovered and they were buried in Savyon on October 17.

They are survived by their wife/mother, Ayelet, and children/siblings Omer, 20, Anog, 18 and Adi, 16. Gil’s sister, Shiri Weiss, was kidnapped to Gaza with her daughter Noga; they were released on November 25. Shiri’s husband, Ilan, was missing for close to three months and declared dead on January 1. Gil is also survived by his mother, Tamar, and his brothers Yaron and Lior.

As a member of the kibbutz’s local security team, Gil was retroactively recognized as a fallen soldier with the rank of warrant officer.

Gil was at home when the attack began and he left the house to fight the terrorist invasion. His brother-in-law, Ofer Revivo, told The New York Times that Gil “fought with them and managed to kill a few, but then ran out of ammunition.” He was shot twice in the legs and died shortly afterward in a kibbutz clinic.

Inbar was at his girlfriend Yuval’s house in the nearby town of Mabu’im, following a 12-hour shift as a security guard in Ashkelon. When he heard what was going on, he decided to go pick up his weapon from his workplace and try and protect his home of Be’eri. He was ambushed and killed along the way. The family believes they both died within minutes of each other, in two different locations.

Gil, who worked at the Be’eri printing house, was remembered as a loving and devoted father, who loved to travel in Israel and abroad, and was a big fan of music. Inbar, who was contemplating starting medical studies after he was released in mid-2023 from his military service — where he was a paramedic in the Golani Brigade — was recalled as a loving big brother, who also was a big music fan, and loved to add to his already extensive collection of tattoos.

“All my body is shouting ‘why them’ because they were like angels,” Ayelet told The New York Times. “Both of them have good faith and pure hearts.” While her husband was a member of the kibbutz security team, her son didn’t have to head to the frontline, she noted, “but he’s not that type of person… he always wanted to keep his friends and his family safe.”

In an interview with Channel 13 news, Ayelet said “I want to scream out my grief so that people know who Gil was and who Inbar was… every night he would tell me ‘I love you,’ until his last night,” she said of her husband.

“Everything we wanted, he would do for us,” Gil’s daughter Anog told Channel 13. “The smallest thing, even in the middle of the night, if something didn’t work, he would immediately come to help. He was a perfect father.”

Inbar’s girlfriend, Yuval Tal, told the TV network that “he was wonderful, he was a little shy, so he approached me in a shy manner. We started talking right away about our tattoos, and we discovered we had the same tattoo.”

His mother said “[Inbar] was a kid who was always in the center of things. He had this kind of backbone, he was always the listener — the friend who listened, the friend who supported.” His brother, Adi, said he was not surprised Inbar had set out to protect the kibbutz: “These are the values that my Mom and Dad raised us with, all of the siblings — to go, to help, as much as we can, the family, everyone — to put others first.”

In a post on Facebook, Omer wrote to his father and brother: “Gil and Inbar, the beloved and the lovely, in life and death did not part. You both went out to protect and you were both taken from us at 7:30 a.m. — at different locations but together.”
Source: The Times of Israel