Oded was born on May 11, 1940, in Haifa to Yitzhak and Bella Lifshitz and was the brother of Telma. He studied at the Reali School and was a member of the Hashomer Hatzair youth movement. Together with members of his Haifa gar’in — the late Aryeh Zalmanovich, the late Amiram Cooper and Shlomo Margalit — he founded Kibbutz Nir Oz, where he lived until October 7.
Oded served in the Nahal and Paratroopers units and fought in Israel’s wars: the Six-Day War, the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War and the First Lebanon War.
He held many roles in Nir Oz — from serving as kibbutz secretary in his twenties to serving as chairman of the kibbutz board until just a few years ago. He was among the leaders of Nir Oz’s economic rehabilitation. Throughout his life, he remained committed to the ideas and values he absorbed at home and in the Hashomer Hatzair movement: Zionism, secularism, socialism and fellowship among peoples.
Together with Yochka, he built a large and loving family that included four children, grandchildren and a great-granddaughter. Their shared love of cacti endured over the years.
From his earliest days in Nir Oz, Oded demonstrated a deep sense of public responsibility. In the early 1970s, he was among the leaders of the struggle against the expulsion of the Bedouin from northern Sinai and against the establishment of settlements on their lands in the Rafah Salient.
Throughout his life, he acted on his belief in human dignity and the possibility of coexistence. In recent years, he volunteered with the “Road to Recovery” organization, transporting Palestinian patients from the Erez border crossing to hospitals in Israel for medical treatment.
In the 1980s, Oded fulfilled a lifelong dream when he began his career as a journalist at Al HaMishmar, where he eventually became a senior correspondent, writing articles, essays and opinion columns on social, economic and political issues. On the second anniversary of his death, Sifriat Poalim published To the Edge of the Border, a collection of his writings and articles, as part of the Kav Adom series. The book reflects his unique voice, his humanistic commitment and his deep belief in peace, justice and equality.
On October 7, 2023, Oded was abducted from his home in Nir Oz while wounded. Testimonies from his days in captivity revealed that he helped those around him as much as he could and remained deeply concerned for his wife, Yocheved, who had also been abducted. Oded was murdered in captivity on October 26, 2023. His body was returned to Israel on February 20, 2025, and laid to rest in the soil of Nir Oz — the kibbutz he founded, loved and dedicated his life to.
He was 83 years old at the time of his death.
May Oded’s memory be a blessing.
