The Palestinian group Hamas published a video on Monday in which three Israeli women supposedly held captive in the Gaza Strip blame Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for the Islamist attack on October 7 and demand that he negotiate the release of prisoners.
In this 76-second video, released by Hamas media with the title “a number of Zionist detainees send a message to (Benjamin) Netanyahu and his government,” three women can be seen sitting on plastic chairs. One of them, sitting in the middle, asks the Israeli prime minister to conclude a prisoner swap with Hamas to obtain her release.
Addressing the head of the Israeli government, this woman shouts in Hebrew: “Free us now, free the citizens from them, free the prisoners from them, let us return to our families.”
“There was supposed to be a ceasefire. You promised to free us,” accuses the woman, the only one of the three who speaks in the video.
“You are killing us, you want to kill us,” he adds, and accuses the president of not having protected the communities near Gaza during the Hamas attack on October 7, which left more than 1,400 dead in Israel, more than 5,400 injured and 239 captive hostages in the enclave.
So far, the identity of the women who appear in the video has not been revealed and Israel has not confirmed that they are indeed hostages in the hands of the Islamist group.
Several Israeli media published a screenshot of the recording on their websites, indicating that they would not publish it, considering that they were statements imposed by the Islamist group. According to the latest report from the Israeli authorities, at least 239 hostages kidnapped by Hamas commandos in their attack on Israeli soil on October 7 are being held in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called the video “cruel psychological propaganda” on Monday. “This is cruel psychological propaganda by Hamas-ISIS,” Netanyahu said in statements released by his office, linking the Palestinian Islamist movement to the jihadist group Islamic State. “I think of Yelena Trupanov, Danielle Aloni and Rimon Kirsht, who were kidnapped by Hamas […]. Our hearts go out to you and to all the other kidnapped people,” he added.