President Isaac Herzog asked for forgiveness from four slain Israeli hostages on Thursday, after their bodies were believed to be returned to Israel under the terms of the ceasefire and hostage release deal, while other Israeli leaders reacted with a mix of sorrow and anger.

“Agony. Pain. There are no words,” Herzog said on X. “Our hearts — the hearts of an entire nation — lie in tatters.”

“On behalf of the State of Israel, I bow my head and ask for forgiveness,” he wrote, after Israel received four coffins, said by Hamas to contain the bodies of Shiri Bibas, her two young sons Ariel and Kfir, and Oded Lifshitz.

“Forgiveness for not protecting you on that terrible day. Forgiveness for not bringing you home safely,” the president wrote. “May their memory be a blessing.”

There was no immediate comment from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose office had said on Wednesday that “in this difficult time, our hearts are with the grieving families.”

The coffins said to contain the remains of the four hostages were brought to Israel in an IDF convoy at midday on Thursday, and were then taken to the Abu Kabir National Center of Forensic Medicine for identification, a process that Health Ministry officials said could take up to 48 hours.

The Bibas family requested on Wednesday that the public “refrain from eulogizing our loved ones until there is confirmation following final identification.”

Israeli lawmakers by and large respected the request and avoided definitively declaring the identities of the slain hostages, or in some instances appeared to be holding off on making any statement until the bodies had been identified.

Some right-wing lawmakers, meanwhile, issued statements attacking Hamas and Palestinians in the hours following the arrival of the caskets in Israel.

Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli declared that “a society that cultivates a culture of murder and death has no right to exist.”

Otzma Yehudit chairman Itamar Ben Gvir, apparently paraphrasing US President Donald Trump, said Hamas to “the gates of hell,” and urged the public to “remember these moments.”

“The sadness over the shedding of innocent blood. The jubilation of the beasts of prey. The thirst for blood. The clear knowledge that these Nazis must not continue to live,” wrote the ultranationalist minister. “Our historic duty to our children is not to give up.”

The far-right lawmaker, who resigned from the government in protest of the ceasefire deal with Hamas, reiterated his oft-repeated sentiment that “the Nazis deserve no humanitarian aid. No........

© The Times of Israel