Hamas cruelly taunts slain hostages’ kin with haunting new video of captives before death, promises ‘last messages’
Hamas on Monday taunted kin of the six hostages found slain in Gaza by releasing haunting pre-recorded footage of the victims — and warning the gut-wrenching clips were only a teaser to their “last messages.”
One of the gaunt and exhausted-looking hostages, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, said in the eerie propaganda video that she feared she’d never escape alive.
“Bombing here never stops, and we are afraid for our lives. We are scared of dying here,’’ Yerushalmi said, according to the Jerusalem Post.
She and the other five hostages — US-Israeli Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Ori Danino, 25, Alex Lobanov, 32, Carmel Gat, 40, and Almog Sarusi, 27 — were found dead in a tunnel in Rafah on Saturday.
They are believed to have been killed two to three days before their bodies were discovered.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that they were all shot execution-style in the back of the head.
The Palestinian terrorists also cruelly suggested in a separate posting Monday that the innocent captives were deliberately executed because they were about to be rescued by Israeli forces.
Yerushalmi, in the pre-recorded footage,was said to have included a message for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but it was not included in what was released, the Jerusalem outlet said.
Netanyahu has come under fire — including from President Biden — for failing to secure the hostages’ release.
Yerushalmi — who was working at the Nova musical fest as a bartender when she was abducted during the Oct. 7 massacre — told her family, “I love and miss you all so much,’’ according to the Times of Israel.
Her mother said in a statement Monday, “This is not how I imagined your end.’’
The heartbroken family added, “Our Eden, we love you too and we miss you like crazy. You are forever in our hearts.’’
In the footage, each of the captives appeared and said their names before the footage transitioned to still frames — including one threatening to release the captives’ full statements, according to the video posted on Telegram.
“Hours & We will release their last statements,” the video text said in Hebrew, English and Arabic. “Exchange deal… freedom & life, military pressure… death and failure.”
Hamas previously released similar videos of Oct. 7 hostages — footage that the Israeli government has denounced as a form of psychological warfare.
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.
