Lili Itamari

Lili Itamari, 63, and her husband Ram Itamari, 56, were murdered by Hamas terrorists on October 7 in their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

On the day of the attack, Lili told her family that they were both hiding in the reinforced safe room in their home, their son Tomer told The New York Times.

When the IDF arrived hours later, all they found was a burned-out husk of a home, and it wasn’t until three weeks later that the couple could be formally identified.

They are survived by their two children, Tomer and daughter Raz, who was the last person to speak to the couple before their deaths.

“I’m glad their last conversation was with me,” she told Ynet.

Described by her lifelong friend Sariy Yogev to a local news outlet as “the salt of the earth,” Lili retired from her job in the Education Ministry earlier this year and began focusing on her passion: traveling abroad and organizing vacations for her friends, family — and anyone who approached her.

Ram worked as a transportation manager and safety officer for Electra and Matav. In a post shared on Facebook, his colleague and friend Shai Talmor remembered him as “an extraordinary man — a kibbutznik in the full sense of the word, prickly on the outside but soft on the inside.”

At the couple’s funeral in Kibbutz Ruhama in the Negev on October 29, Raz eulogized her parents, saying: “I know you fought until your last breath, and now my war begins.”

“You were an amazing mother,” she said of Lili. “I could talk about you for hours but people still wouldn’t understand.”

“My beloved father, there wasn’t a day that we didn’t talk. You were my confidant” she said, turning her attention to Ram. “I can’t stomach the fact that you won’t be with me [at my wedding].”

Ram’s father, Amatsia Itamari lamented their deaths at the hands of the Hamas terrorists, saying at the funeral that he could not understand “how they abandoned the border communities. We will never, never forgive them.”

“You chose to live in a Gaza border village after a period in Ruhama. The two graves dug in the hill were intended for us [your parents]. This is a cruel and upside-down world,” he added.

The day after the funeral, their friend Yehudit Yanko wrote of the couple that it was “hard to talk about you in the past tense.”

“Because they were taken from us too soon, we are left to deal with the unthinkable and find solace in the beautiful memories they left behind,” she added. “Their legacy will forever remind us of the importance of cherishing our loved ones and savoring every precious moment we have together.”
Source: The Times of Israel