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Iraq

Harrowing footage shows 6 hostages lighting Hanukkah candles 8 months before execution

2025-12-12

Video and photos can be seen at the link. They showed the Muslim colonizers three thousand years of courage.

[IsraelTimes] Families of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino, and Alex Lobanov approve release of videos filmed by Hamas terrorists in Gaza tunnel, intended for propaganda, recovered by IDF

Harrowing footage of the six Israeli hostages murdered by Hamas
Hamas

..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...
holy warriors in August 2024 was released Thursday night by their families after being aired on Israeli television, providing a uniquely extensive glimpse into what the hostages went through during their first months in Hamas captivity.

The videos included footage of the captives marking Hanukkah in December 2023, with the release of the clips coming days before the Jewish holiday begins this year. While the footage was filmed by Hamas holy warriors for propaganda purposes, the material is unlike other clips published during the war that showed hostages reading statements evidently dictated by their captors.

In the clips, which the Israel Defense Forces recovered during military operations in the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about oppression and disproportionate response...
Strip, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino, and Alex Lobanov are seen together in a tunnel. The material, hours of which was recovered, had been shown only to their families until it was partly broadcast by Channel’s "Uvda" investigative program.

The captives are seen lighting Hanukkah candles fashioned out of paper cups and singing the Hanukkah song "Ma’oz Tzur." The hostages were also filmed marking New Year’s Eve 2024 and eating a piece of fruit, as their captors attempted to show a different reality of captivity.

At one point, Goldberg-Polin likened the hostages’ plight to that of the Jews living in Nazi Germany.

"There’s that picture of the Hanukkiah with a [Nazi flag] above it," Goldberg-Polin is heard reflecting in one of the clips.

Later on in the clip, one of the hostages is heard joking, "Where are the sufganiyot?"

Hersh responded, "We’re waiting for Roladin in Israel," referring to the bakery known for making fanciful donuts during the Hanukkah season.

The hostages’ voices can be heard as they sing Hanukkah songs and discuss religious differences in their upbringings and lives.

The Hanukkah footage was taken after 80 days of captivity, eight months before all six were murdered by their captors.

The footage also shows the hostages playing cards and backgammon while lying on thin mattresses in their tunnel cell. Goldberg-Polin perches his left arm on a pillow; the lower part was blown off by a grenade thrown by a terrorist during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, at a field shelter near the Nova rave in southern Israel.

At one point in a clip, Lobanov is filmed opening a packaged cake and eating it, and saying "Advertising."

In another segment, earlier in their captivity, he shaves Goldberg-Polin and Sarusi’s hair, remarking to them about a similar scene in the Holocaust film, "The Pianist."

The staged nature of the videos is visible in the hostages’ awkward smiles, and the camera’s focus on certain details, like the packaged cakes left on their mattresses or the pillows propped behind them.

The clips were ultimately not released by the terror group. Hamas did release clips of some of the six hostages reading statements, both before and after their deaths.

When the bodies of the six hostages were discovered in late August 2024, they were found in a narrow tunnel, having been shot multiple times at close range, surrounded by bottles filled with dark urine and a plastic bucket used as a rudimentary toilet.

The six, Goldberg-Polin, 23, Yerushalmi, 24, Danino, 25, Lobanov, 32, Gat, 40, and Sarusi, 27, were killed by their captors in that tunnel in Rafah’s Tel Sultan neighborhood on August 29, 2024, and were discovered by troops two days later.

The military recovered unpublished footage of other hostages during the ground offensive in Gaza, some of which has been released to the public by their families, though none has been as extensive as the material made public on Thursday.

’I KNOW HE WAS WITH THOSE WONDERFUL PEOPLE, AND I KNOW HE LOVED THEM’
Family members of each hostage were interviewed by "Uvda," describing the intense feelings of seeing their loved ones alive and speaking in the videos.

"It’s very confusing, it feels like he’s right there," said Rachel Goldberg-Polin. "And it was hours of footage."

Almog Sarusi’s father noted how his son was always filmed smiling. During the Hanukkah video, Sarusi grins widely, wishing everyone a happy holiday while hoping to be home soon.

"What heroes," said Rachel Goldberg-Polin. "Six young luminous people who did everything right and they stayed alive and they did their part. And for us to claim we brought them back, in bags, bags of children to their parents — please don’t count Hersh among the people you saved."

At least three of the six were badly hurt. Goldberg-Polin had surgery on his blown-off arm in Gaza after meeting Or Danino, who demanded as much from their captors. Danino, an off-duty officer who went back to rescue friends at the Nova festival, was shot in the back, while Sarusi was also shot during the October 7 attack.

"We never knew Hersh with one arm; we only knew Hersh with both of his arms," said Jon Polin. "It was 400 days later when we buried him. When I picture him, it’s with one arm. We were planning for him to come back with one arm."

Eden Yerushalmi’s mother and sisters spoke about how they had hoped Eden was held captive with Carmel, after hearing about how the Kibbutz Be’eri native had taken care of some of the children taken hostage before they were freed during the November 2023 ceasefire.

Somehow, knowing that Yerushalmi was with Gat, a woman who was a little older and wiser, initially eased their anguish.

Eshel Gat, Carmel father, whose wife Kinneret was killed on October 7, revealed how he saw his daughter being taken captive that day from their Kibbutz Be’eri home, an image that repeatedly crops up in his mind as he mourns his loved ones.

Michal Lobanov, Alex Lobanov’s wife, said she frequently imagines her husband’s last moments, as the six were found next to one another in that narrow tunnel.

She also stressed that the videos were "completely stage-managed clips that Hamas forced them to be filmed in."

"I imagined he said Shema Yisrael and they shot him," said Yigal Sarusi.

Goldberg-Polin said she repeats the prayer twice each night, once for herself and once for Hersh, because she does not know if he had time to recite Shema Yisrael before he was killed.

"I pray it was fast, and I know he was with those wonderful people, and I know he loved them," she said.

Posted by:trailing wife

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