Gadi Moses

Gadi Moshe Moses (born March 12, 1944) is an Israeli citizen who was abducted from his home by Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) militants during the Nir Oz massacre on October 7, 2023. He was released after 482 days in captivity, as part of an agreement between Israel and Hamas. Moses is the oldest living male hostage released during the Gaza War.

Early life Moses was born and raised in Hadera, Israel, to a father who immigrated from Germany and a mother who immigrated from Turkey; he has one brother. His family was of low socioeconomic status, and his mother died of kidney failure when he was a young boy.

In his youth, Moses was active in the HaShomer HaTzair youth movement, and at the age of 20, he moved to Nir Oz as part of the movement's Tzabar core group. Moses later served as the movement's regional coordinator for the south of Israel. Moses worked in the agricultural sector, and in his capacity as an agronomist, he worked in several Third World countries, where he taught local farmers about irrigation and cultivation methods. As part of his work, he lived in Egypt, where he learned basic Arabic, a skill that served him during his captivity.

Abduction On the morning of October 7, 2023, Moses's home in Nir Oz was attacked by three PIJ militants. At the time, Moses’s partner, Efrat Katz, her daughter, and two granddaughters were also at the house. As Moses came to the front of the house to allow his family to hide, he was abducted to Gaza. Moses later recounted after his release that his abduction experience was "short compared to others" stating that he was quickly shoved on a motorbike between two men and taken across the border.

Katz reported the abduction over the kibbutz radio network shortly thereafter. About an hour later, Katz, her daughter, and her two granddaughters were abducted by a different PIJ cell. However, before reaching the Gaza Strip, Katz was killed by Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) fire. Efrat's daughter and two granddaughters were taken to Gaza as hostages, and were released in the first hostage deal in late November of 2023. Moses's ex-wife, Margalit, was also abducted from the kibbutz and released in the same first hostage deal. Later in the day of the abduction, a video was circulated showing Moses being led toward the Gaza Strip by PIJ operatives.

Captivity Throughout his captivity, Moses was held in ten different hideouts. During transfers between these locations, he was disguised with a keffiyeh and a walking stick to conceal his identity. He spent the last eight months of his captivity in Al-Mawasi, located in the south of the Gaza Strip.

Moses was referred to by his guards as "Haj" and was allowed to listen to the radio for a few minutes once a day. To maintain his mental and physical fitness, he wrote crossword puzzles, solved math exercises, and walked 5–15 kilometers a day, even though he was confined to small rooms that were sometimes dark. He also recounted singing the Israeli national anthem "Hatikvah" over and over again throughout the day. In December 2023, Moses listened to Israeli news on the radio and discovered that Katz was no longer alive Consequently, he began to fear for the lives of his daughter and her children. This fear intensified after he heard on the radio, on the anniversary of the October 7 attacks, about the murder of Tamar Kedem Siman Tov and her family, who lived next door to his daughter. After hearing this, Moses assumed they had also been murdered and only discovered they were alive upon his release from captivity. After Moses's return, it was revealed that the video was filmed at Nasser Hospital, and that Moses had been interrogated that same day about his own service and the service of his children and grandchildren in the IDF.

Before his release, the PIJ militants led Moses to a cemetery, where they showed him an open grave, which led him to believe he was about to be executed. After realizing this was merely a scare tactic, he was forced to film videos in which he claimed that his captors had treated him properly and served him delicious food. In a letter he published about a month after his release, he called upon the members of Nir Oz to work toward the kibbutz's rehabilitation and to return to their homes. In July 2025, Moses met with Benjamin Netanyahu during the prime minister's visit to the kibbutz and asked for assistance in removing bureaucratic obstacles and allocating budgets so that the community rehabilitation process could move forward.

After his release, Moses also called for the reburial of his partner Efrat Katz in Nir Oz, stating watching the casket being covered at the kibbutz felt like closing the circle and needed to keep moving forward. He also spoke as part of the "Stories that Bind Us: Memory and Dialogue of October 7 at Heritage Sites" at the Iron Moulding Heritage Museum in March 2025.