Shir Siegel, daughter of former hostages Keith and Aviva Siegel, married her fiancé, Yuval Bar On, Thursday night, realizing the wedding plans that she had pushed off when her parents were abducted by Hamas from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023.
Keith and Aviva could be seen beaming in a picture Shir posted of herself and her husband under the chuppah — the traditional Jewish marriage canopy — in the ceremony that was also attended by other captivity survivors.
“This is the image of victory,” Shir captioned the picture on Instagram. “And when everyone will be home — that will be total victory. Nothing else.”
In the video she posted from under the chuppah, Shir added two prayers to the benedictions traditionally recited under the chuppah: “That all the hostages should return safely to their families. That peace and love and fraternity should dwell with the entire nation of Israel.”
Footage posted by Shir showed her dancing joyfully with her father, who was released from Hamas captivity just six months ago as part of the last truce-hostage deal with Hamas after 484 days in captivity. Keith, a North Carolina native, could also be seen serenading his daughter with folk singer James Taylor’s “Carolina on my Mind.”
In another video Shir re-posted from her close friend, former hostage Emily Damari, the bride could be seen dancing with Damari and fellow ex-captives Liri Albag, Agam Berger and Amit Soussana, the latter three of whom had been held with Aviva in Gaza.
“Dancing free… these are the moments we dreamt of in captivity,” Damari captioned the video.
Damari, Albag and Berger were released in January as part of the same deal in which Keith was set free. Soussana was released earlier, in the weeklong truce of November 2023, which also saw South African native Aviva return to Israel and immediately devote herself to the campaign for her husband and the other captives’ liberty.
Shir Siegel got engaged to her now-husband a month before the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, when thousands of terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages.
During the onslaught, terrorists snatched Keith and Aviva Siegel from their home in Kfar Aza, while Shir was with her fiancé in Haifa, where they were both university students.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 50 hostages, including 49 of those abducted in the October 7 onslaught. They include the bodies of at least 28 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Twenty are believed to be alive, and there are grave concerns for the well-being of two others, Israeli officials have said. Hamas is also holding the body of an IDF soldier killed in Gaza in 2014.