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2025-07-01 Israel-Palestine-Jordan
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Hamas tortured hostage Itzik Elgarat to death, thinking he was a pilot, says brother
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[IsraelTimes] Dani Elgarat reveals family given details of how sibling, 68, died in Gaza; Knesset guards forcibly remove him from committee meeting after he accuses Netanyahu of funding Hamas
Israeli hostage Itzik Elgarat died as Hamas tortured him for information because they thought he was a pilot, his brother told lawmakers Monday.
Dani Elgarat revealed during a raucous Knesset House Committee meeting that, a day earlier, intelligence officials had provided the family with more details about his brother’s death.
Itzik Elgarat, 68, was in his Kibbutz Nir Oz home on the morning of October 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists attacked. They shot him through his safe room door, injured him, and took him captive. He was among 251 people abducted from Israel when the Palestinian terror group led thousands of gunmen in a devastating invasion of southern Israel that killed 1,200 people.
Dani Elgarat said that Hamas thought Itzik was a pilot because he had a tattoo of an eagle on his arm.
“They took him for interrogation and he never came back,” he said.
Itzik was initially held with Edan Alexander, a US-Israeli IDF soldier who was recently released from captivity in what was seen as a goodwill gesture by Hamas to US President Donald Trump.
Elgarat reported that Alexander had asked the Hamas guards where Itzik was when he didn’t come back, and they told him, “He has gone.”
“Itzik died, was murdered, he suffered a heart attack during interrogation under torture,” Elgarat said, without providing further details.
The body of Itzik Elgarat was released by Hamas in February, as part of a ceasefire deal that saw dozens of hostages, dead and alive, returned to Israel. He was buried close to his home in Nir Oz. At the funeral, Dani Elgarat proclaimed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had “dug his grave.”
The truce eventually collapsed, and the war, triggered by Hamas’s October 7 attack, has persisted.
At the Knesset committee meeting, guards forcibly removed Elgarat after he yelled about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu funding Hamas. l.Since 2018 and prior to October 7, Israel had allowed suitcases filled with millions of dollars in Qatari cash to enter Gaza through its crossings, to maintain a fragile ceasefire with the Hamas rulers of the Strip.
As Elgarat was removed from the chamber, lawmakers shouted that he was staging a provocation. Earlier, the Knesset House Committee saw the removal of Hadash-Ta’al MK Ofer Cassif amid a heated debate that ended with a vote to impeach Hadash-Ta’al chairman Ayman Odeh over a statement he had made appearing to equate Israeli hostages held in Gaza with Palestinian security prisoners.
Cassif was twice removed from the room after verbally sparring with bereaved father Itzik Bonzel, who lost his son Amit during the fighting in Gaza.
Families of hostages and victims of the Hamas attack have kept up a constant presence at the Knesset, attending committee meetings where they have frequently clashed with lawmakers over their sharp criticism of the government for security failures that led to October 7 attack, and for failure to reach a deal to bring back all of the hostages.
Mediated talks between Israel and Hamas have so far failed to make progress in reaching an agreement.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stressed Sunday that freedom for hostages was a top priority.
“First of all, [we need] to free the hostages,” he said during a visit to a Shin Bet facility in southern Israel. “Of course, we will also have to solve the Gaza issue, to defeat Hamas, but I believe that we will achieve both tasks.”
His comments were broadly interpreted as prioritizing a deal to return the 50 remaining captives in Gaza before all else, as Israel faces mounting US pressure to reach a deal to end the war.
On Monday, Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer was set to meet in Washington with American officials to get on the same page with the US before another round of indirect talks in Cairo, the diplomat and a US official familiar with the matter told The Times of Israel.
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Posted by trailing wife 2025-07-01 00:00||
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