Omer Neutra, Israeli-American soldier from Long Island, remembered at Syosset memorial service

In the Syosset synagogue where, almost a decade ago, Omer Neutra became a bar mitzvah, he was mourned Tuesday.

The 21-year-old Plainview native’s mother, father and brother were there, along with people he’d gone to school with since kindergarten, the governor, the Nassau County executive and about 700 others.

It was a memorial service, not a funeral, because the young Israeli-American soldier’s body has not been recovered. It is still being held somewhere in Gaza by the Hamas militants who killed him, Israeli military officials said this week. Citing unspecified intelligence, they said Neutra was not kidnapped in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and held hostage, as was once thought, but had been killed that day.

A plea for life

"Now things are clear, but not as we hoped, and your void, a big hole in my stomach," Orna Neutra, Omer’s mother, told the crowd at the Midway Jewish Center.

"I plead for a sign of life," she said. "I didn’t get any. Instead we received, on a daily basis, for over 423 days, signs of hope and love" from friends and neighbors.

She thanked them for being "here with us on this unbearable journey."

Addressing Omer, she said: "My beautiful son, my strong .. big, smiley boy, I felt so small in your powerful hugs ... We will miss you forever and love you forever."

In an interview, a friend of Omer Neutra’s, Moris Goldstein, 23, of Roslyn, said they’d both attended Schechter School of Long Island, a Jewish day school in Williston Park, and played together on a soccer team and volleyball team.

"We all miss him," Goldstein said.

Another school friend, Sara Blau, of Murray Hill, Manhattan, who works in real estate services at a bank, said in an interview that she and Omer had both gone to Israel after high school.

"We all love Israel, want to protect our country, and he was doing it on the front lines," Blau said. "We understood why he was doing it."

After the attack, a friend called her: “‘No one’s heard from Omer.’ There was a moment of shock and disbelief, and from there on out, until two days ago, we had no idea what had happened to him."

Near the Gaza border

When Hamas militants attacked Israel, they killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 250 more, including children, holding them hostage in Gaza.

Omer Neutra, serving near the Gaza border, was among the first soldiers to respond to the attack, his family said Tuesday. Video footage appears to show the tank he was in that day getting hit by a rocket-propelled grenade, Midway Rabbi Joel Levenson said in an interview after the service.

"It is believed he was killed and his body was taken," Levenson said.

Of the roughly 100 hostages thought to be still in Gaza, Israel estimates two-thirds are alive. The Neutras, who in the last year have raised their son's case at the White House and at the Republican National Convention, have repeatedly and publicly pushed Israeli and U.S. leaders to ensure the hostages’ return, and did so again at Tuesday’s service.

"It is too late for us," said Daniel Neutra, wearing his older brother's jacket. But "there are about 50 families like ours who still have hope. Their loved ones can still be saved. Every march, every rally, every trip to Washington or Jerusalem to plead for Omer’s rescue — it’s all too late for him, but it was not in vain."

In remarks at Tuesday’s service, Omer Neutra’s family and friends described a sports-loving, video-game playing youth who graduated in 2019 from the Schechter School, then postponed college to enlist in the Israeli Defense Forces.

The boy they remembered crawled into a bush to retrieve a ball and got poison ivy on his face. He called home to reassure his parents after a basketball game where he got a cut over his eye.

He was older when he explained to his father, Ronen Neutra, his decision to enlist: "How can I go back to college when all my friends are about to serve the country?" his father recalled.

Blessed parents

When Daniel Neutra talked to his brother for the last time, not long before the attack, Omer told him "things were heating up on the border but higher-ups said he and his soldiers didn’t need to worry, things were calming down."

When the family believed Omer Neutra had been kidnapped, they started a 14-month sprint, Ronen Neutra told the crowd: "back to Israel; Washington, D.C.; Doha, Qatar; London; Chicago," telling Omer’s story to elected leaders, at rallies, to anyone who would listen.

Now, Ronen Neutra wondered: "How do you speak about your son that you’ve been fighting for 14 months, hoping, praying that he survived ... And then one moment, one knock on the door, and it’s all over, you have to internalize that you will never see him again?"

Then Ronen Neutra, as his wife had also done, spoke before the crowd directly to their dead boy.

"We were blessed to be chosen to be your parents," he said. "We love you and miss you every single day."

With AP