Report on hostage shooting
Israeli soldiers mistook calls for help as a Hamas trap
December 29, 2023, 4:02 a.m
The hostages cry out for help in Hebrew, approach their supposed liberators with their upper bodies bare and holding a white flag – and are then shot by Israeli soldiers. How could this failure come about? The military has reconstructed the events.
Following the accidental killing of three hostages in northern Gaza by Israeli soldiers two weeks ago, the military has released new findings on the incident. The soldier who initially killed two of the hostages had only limited visibility of the hostages, the Israeli army said. In addition, two soldiers did not hear the order to stop firing because of the noise of tanks and later shot the third man.
According to the Army, a soldier initially shot “at three figures identified as a threat,” killing two of them. The third person then fled into a building in the Hamas stronghold of Shejaiya. After around 15 minutes, the Israeli commander in charge heard cries for help in Hebrew and asked the hostage to get out of the building and towards the soldiers. However, two soldiers did not hear the order to cease fire because of the noise from a tank nearby. According to the army, the soldiers therefore shot at the man and killed him.
According to the army, the three hostages were without outer clothing to show that they were not wearing explosive belts. One of the men waved a white flag. According to the new findings, based among other things on an analysis of aerial photographs, the soldier who killed two of them had only a limited view of the hostages from his position.
The military’s investigative report said that soldiers had previously mistook cries for help and written cries for help from the three hostages in Hebrew for an attempt at deception by Hamas. They therefore suspected that they were being lured to a booby-trapped building. The soldiers involved had experienced such attempts at deception before. The soldiers also attacked the building in which the three men were being held because they suspected an ambush. Five terrorists were killed and the hostages escaped.
The army failed in its mission to rescue hostages in the case of the three men who were mistakenly killed. According to Chief of General Staff Herzi Halevi, the attacks on them could have been prevented. But there was no premeditation, he emphasized. The accidental killing of the hostages caused severe consternation and protests in Israel.
Protests in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem
In the evening, hundreds of Israelis demonstrated in Tel Aviv against the Gaza war. They followed a call from the grassroots movement “Standing Together,” which advocates for dialogue between Israelis and Palestinians. The demonstrators demanded, among other things, an end to the fighting in the Gaza Strip and the release of the hostages held there. As the Haaretz newspaper reports, hundreds of young people from places near the Gaza Strip demonstrated in front of the parliament in Jerusalem for the release of the hostages. They had left Tel Aviv five days earlier to walk to the capital.
A total of 105 hostages were released a month ago as part of a ceasefire. According to Israeli information, almost 130 people are currently being held in the coastal strip. In Israel, people regularly protest against the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, partly because they accuse it of not doing enough to release the hostages.