Hamas on Monday taunted kin of the six hostages found slain in a Gaza tunnel by releasing haunting new footage of the victims — and warning that the gut-wrenching clips were only a teaser to their “last messages.”
The hostages, looking gaunt and exhausted, identify themselves for the camera before the footage transitions to still frames — including one threatening to release the captives’ full statements in a matter of hours, according to the terrorist propaganda video posted on Telegram.
“Hours & We will release their last statements,” the video text said in Hebrew, English and Arabic.
It is not clear when the footage was taken — but the hostages are believed to have been fatally shot at close range multiple times two to three days before their bodies were found Saturday.
The dead hostages have been identified as US-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27.
Autopsies indicated that the group endured nearly 11 months in captivity before they were killed.
Hamas previously released similar videos of Oct. 7 hostages — footage that the Israeli government has denounced as a form of psychological warfare.
Israeli media outlets do not carry the traumatizing video clips.
Past Hamas videos included a brief message from Goldberg-Polin. It was released in April.
In the video, Goldberg-Polin identified himself as Israeli and said he had been held captive for “nearly 200 days,” which suggested that the video was taken shortly before it was released.
The dual American-Israeli citizen was missing part of his left arm, which was blown off by a Hamas grenade when the Palestinian terror group descended on the Nova music festival in southern Negev during the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel.
Goldberg-Polin saw his friend Aner Shapira murdered by the attackers before he and a handful of other injured survivors were carted off to the Gaza Strip in the back of a pickup truck, horrifying footage of the abduction showed.
His body and those of the five other slain hostages found Saturday were released to their families over the weekend.
Relatives of Goldberg-Polin were joined by thousands of mourners at his funeral service in Jerusalem on Monday.
His mother, Rachel Goldberg, begged her murdered son for forgiveness for not being able to bring him home alive.
“If there was something we could have done to save you, and we didn’t think of it, I beg your forgiveness. We tried so very hard, so deeply and desperately. I’m sorry,” she said during the ceremony.
Goldberg and Hersh’s father, Jon Polin, traveled the world over the past 11 months rallying support for their son and the other hostages.
The couple spoke with The Post in early April to mark the six months since their eldest child and only son was abducted.
‘’It’s totally unacceptable that it’s six months, and we’re not yet seeing any real traction on getting our loved ones home,” Polin said at the time.
“All of us — our political leaders, across Israel, across the US, Hamas, Egypt, Qatar — we’re all failing [the hostages].”
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.