Oded Lifshitz

Oded Lifshitz was born in 1940 in Haifa

Lifshitz was born in Haifa in 1940 and grew up there. He was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement and finished the Hebrew Reali School in 1957.

He served as a fighter in the 50th Battalion and fought in the Six-Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War. He was among the founders of Kibbutz Nir Oz, where he held posts such as coordinator and treasurer. He reported from Beirut on the Sabra and Shatila massacre.

From 1983 to 1995 he worked as a journalist at Al HaMishmar, writing on social and political issues and on the kibbutz movements. He also prepared reports for an economics program on Army Radio and wrote for Haaretz from 2015 to 2022. He campaigned for the rights of Bedouin in the Rafah area and volunteered with Road to Recovery.

He was married to Yocheved, and they had 4 children. On 7 October 2023 the couple was kidnapped from their home in Nir Oz to Gaza, and Yocheved was released on 23 October. Israeli authorities determined that he died on 26 October 2023; the IDF said he was killed in captivity by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which claimed he died in an Israeli strike. His body was returned on 20 February 2025 and buried in Nir Oz.