Hamas on Monday mocked the families of six hostages killed in a Gaza tunnel by releasing shocking new footage of the victims, warning that the heartbreaking footage was only a preview of its “final message”.
In a terrorist propaganda video posted to Telegram, the hostages, looking haggard and exhausted, identify themselves to the camera before the footage cuts to still images, including one of them threatening to make public their full statements within hours.
“In a few hours we will publish their final statement,” the video's text read in Arabic, Hebrew and English.
It is unclear when the footage was taken, but the hostages are believed to have been fatally shot multiple times at close range two to three days before their bodies were discovered on Saturday.
The dead hostages were identified as American-Israelis Hersh Goldberg Polin (23), Eden Yerushalmi (24), Ori Danino (25), Alex Lobanov (32), Carmel Gatto (40) and Almog Sarsi (27).
An autopsy revealed that the group had been held captive for around 11 months before they were killed.
Hammes had previously released a similar video of the October 7 hostage taking incident, which the Israeli government condemned as a form of psychological warfare.
Israeli media has not aired the traumatic video clips.
An earlier Hamas video included a short message from Goldberg-Polin. It was released in April.
In the video, Goldberg-Polin identifies himself as Israeli and says he had been held captive for “almost 200 days,” suggesting the video was filmed shortly before its release.
The American-Israeli duelist had lost his left hand, which was blown off by a Hamas grenade when the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas stormed the Nova music festival in the southern Negev during the Israeli massacre on October 7.
In horrifying footage of the kidnapping, Goldberg Pollin saw assailants kill her friend, Anel Shapira, before loading her and several other wounded survivors into the back of a pick-up truck and taking them to the Gaza Strip.
His body, and those of the five other slain hostages discovered on Saturday, were handed over to their families over the weekend.
Goldberg-Polin's funeral in Jerusalem on Monday was attended by thousands of mourners, including family members.
His mother, Rachel Goldberg, begged her slain son to forgive her 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, please forgive us. We tried so hard, we tried so hard, we tried so hard. I'm sorry,” she said during the ceremony.
Goldberg and Hirsch's father, John Pollin, have traveled the world for the past 11 months to appeal for support for their son and the other hostages.
The couple spoke to The Washington Post in early April, six months after their eldest and only son was abducted.
“It is completely unacceptable that six months on, we still have no concrete movement towards bringing our loved ones home,” Pollin said at the time.
“We have all failed, the political leaders of Israel, America, Hamas, Egypt and Qatar. [the hostages].”
