Hamas returned the remains of Lt. Hadar Goldin on Sunday, over 11 years after he was killed in battle in Gaza.

Israel confirmed the body was Goldin’s through DNA testing, four hours after it was returned. 

Goldin was 23 when he fought in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza and took part in a mission to destroy a Hamas tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 1, 2014, during a 72-hour ceasefire. Hamas terrorists killed two Israeli soldiers, taking Goldin’s body with them.

Goldin’s parents, Leah and Simcha, publicly advocated for his return, but did not support the release of living terrorists in exchange for their son’s remains. They repeatedly suggested that humanitarian aid to Gaza be reduced or stopped as long as the remains of their son and Oron Shaul, another soldier whose body was taken in 2014, were held in Gaza. 

After Goldin’s remains were returned, Leah said her family “took for granted that the State of Israel would not leave soldiers behind. It took us 11 years to bring him home through the IDF and security forces. … We faced many disappointments. We cannot give up on who we are, and we will prevail through our values. …Thank you for walking with us all the way.”

Simcha Goldin credited IDF “soldiers [who] fought to bring warriors back from the battlefield. The IDF brought Hadar back to his homeland — no one else. … What this war has proven is that when we fight for our soldiers, we succeed. Victory means bringing home the hostages and bringing home our soldiers to Israel.”

Goldin’s body is the 24th that Hamas has returned since the ceasefire began on Oct. 13 this year, after which all of the remaining hostages, both living and deceased, were meant to be returned within three days. However, the terrorist group has drawn out the return of the remains, and four more hostages have yet to be handed over to Israel: Meny Godard, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, Dror Or and Sudthisak Rinthalak, a Thai national.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir visited the Goldin family on Saturday night. Hamas and the Red Cross were permitted to search for his body in the areas of Gaza controlled by Israel, Hebrew media reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced earlier Sunday that Hamas was expected to return Goldin’s body. 

“Lt. Hadar Goldin fell in a heroic battle in Operation Protective Edge 11 years ago,” Netanyahu said. “His body was taken hostage by Hamas, who refused to return him throughout this entire period. This entire time, Israeli governments made a great effort to return him. Naturally, this has been amid the great agony of his family, which will now be able to give him a Jewish burial.” 

Netanyahu added that Israel has “a tradition from the establishment of the state … to bring back our soldiers who fell in battle, and we are doing it. Sometimes it takes a long time … It is a holy value. It expresses our mutual responsibility with the citizens of Israel and first and foremost the soldiers and fighters of Israel.” 

Goldin’s return was reportedly tied to the fate of 200 Hamas fighters currently hiding in a tunnel in the Israel-controlled half of Gaza. 

According to Israel’s Channel 12, the White House reportedly suggested a plan by which, after Goldin’s remains are returned, the terrorists would lay down their arms and surrender, and Israel would allow them to go into exile or to the Hamas-controlled half of Gaza. The IDF would then destroy the tunnel in which they were hiding.

An Israeli official said last week that Netanyahu “would not allow safe passage for 200 Hamas terrorists.” 

The contentious, dramatic events that marred the summer of 2014 in Israel will be dramatized in the HBO series “Our Boys,” which premieres a week from today on August 12.  

On June 12, 2014, three Israeli teenagers — Eyal Yifrach, Gilad Sha’ear and Naftali Fraenkel — were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists. After a nationwide search of more than two weeks that left the country on edge, their bodies were found dumped in a field. Two days later, the burned body of Palestinian teenager Mohammed Abu Khdeir was discovered in a western Jerusalem forest. “Our Boys” follows the Shin Bet’s investigation into Abu Khdeir’s murder, revealing an unexpected story that the show’s creators believe is worth retelling — for both dramatic and political reasons. 

While “Our Boys” begins with the kidnapping of the three Israeli teenagers, neither the boys nor their families appear as actual characters in the show. Viewers are instead brought up to speed courtesy of news footage from 2014. In contrast, Abu Khdeir and his family are introduced as well-developed characters with whom the audience can sympathize. 

Hagai Levi, one of the show’s Israeli creators, explained the decision to Jewish Insider: “It’s much more interesting to deal with my own soul searching than why ‘the other’ would do something to me,” he said.

Levi, along with co-creators Joseph Cedar (who previously directed “Norman”) and Palestinian filmmaker Tawfik Abu Wael, visited New York City last week to promote the show. Joined by actor Shlomi Elkabetz (who plays Shin Bet operative Simon), the three filmmakers sat down with JI in the reading room of The Whitby Hotel in midtown Manhattan to share what drew them to the project. 

“We’re on this wheel,” notes Cedar, who was born in New York but immigrated to Jerusalem at age six, regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “A cycle of where some kind of violent act creates victimhood, suffering, pain that then creates rage, that turns into a violent act that creates pain, suffering, victimhood and so on.” In Cedar’s view, “aggression is more interesting than victimhood and so dramatically that’s probably the reason.” 

Cedar said the decision to focus on Khdeir also had political motivations. “There’s also a political reason for us focusing on the aggression and not the victimhood,” he said. “Holding onto victimhood creates more aggression. Examining your own aggression prevents the next victim. We’re not interested in our own victimhood, not because we don’t sympathize with the pain but, because we have an interest in stopping the cycle.” 

For a show about a region with competing narratives, the creators embraced their own differences and didn’t shy away from the challenge of syncing those views into a single series.

Abu Wael, who directed the Palestinian scenes for “Our Boys,” said the series is written from an Israeli point of view, which created a challenge for him. “It is very difficult because from a Palestinian point of view, the first thing they will say is ‘but the occupation didn’t start with the kidnapping of the three boys. The killers of the three boys were living under apartheid.’” 

Cedar, who argued that there are both Israeli and Palestinian points of view in the miniseries, conceded that for Abu Wael, even if the three Israeli boys aren’t characters in the show, “the decision to start the cycle with our victimhood is a cop-out on our side.” 

It remains to be seen how the average HBO viewer will react to a show diving deep into the murky waters of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Shin Bet’s investigation into Abu Khdeir’s murder leads them to a pair of Mizrahi yeshiva students in the West Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Nof, a group not typically associated with acts of extremism. “For us it was very important to show the hidden currents in society and not the obvious ones,” Levi said. 

A scene from the upcoming miniseries “Our Boys.”

Cedar said the identity of Khdeir’s murderers reverberated through Israel in a unique way.  

“One of the interesting things that happened when the identity of the killers became known is that all Israelis had a sigh of relief,” Cedar recalls. “They’re not one of us. It’s either an insane man who forces his young nephews to take part in this or they’re in some weird group that has no larger institutionalized base, or no belonging to something that reflects on us. It’s extremely rare and it probably will never happen again because it’s so rare.” 

For Cedar, the series demonstrates how that perception is wrong, and in his view, there is no way for Israeli Jews to distance themselves from the murder. 

Elkabetz, whose character leads the Shin Bet investigation on the show, said there might not have been an organization behind the murder, but “if individuals decide to do an act, you understand there are bigger influences. It’s in the air and they get permission from it.”  

For fans of “Fauda” and “Shtisel,” “Our Boys” incorporates both similar dynamics and even several cast members from the two shows. Shadi Mar’i, who plays Walid on “Fauda,” appears on “Our Boys” as Abu Khdeir’s older brother, while Michael Aloni, who plays Akiva on “Shtisel,” is a Shin Bet investigator. 

Abu Wael points out that there are only so many actors in Israel, but says there’s a key difference between “Fauda” and “Our Boys.” 

“On Fauda, Palestinians are either terrorists or traitors,” he said. “This show is different because you have a very normal Palestinian family with dreams like everyone else.”