By Ron Kampeas
(JTA) — The Israeli military reported that the bodies of six hostages have been recovered in the Gaza Strip, and the main group representing the families of hostage held in Gaza promised a massive protest of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s failure to achieve a deal that would release the captives.
“The IDF located a number of bodies during combat in the Gaza Strip,” the army spokesman, Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, said just before midnight on Saturday. “At this time, the troops are still operating in the area and are carrying out a process to extract and identify the bodies that will last several hours. We ask to refrain from spreading rumors.”
The IDf later confirmed the six hostages’ names: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23. Eden Yerushalmi, 24. Ori Danino, 25. Almog Sarusi, 27. Alex Lubnov, 33. Each had been attending the Nova music festival near the Gaza border on Oct. 7. Carmel Gat, 40, had been at Kibbutz Beeri visiting her mother, Kinneret, who was killed on Oct. 7.
The identification followed several hours in which rumors of the retrievals, including the possible identities of those who had been killed, spread widely on Israeli social media and at the regular Saturday night mass protest in Tel Aviv to support an immediate ceasefire deal.
Addressing the rumors while speaking to the crowd, the relative of a hostage said those believed dead were “young hostages who were alive just a week ago.” Protesters checked their phones and gasped, a participant said.
The hostages were all killed as Israeli troops closed in on the tunnel below Rafah where they were being held, Israeli army radio reported.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum blamed Netanyahu and said it would mount protests.
“Netanyahu abandoned the hostages!” the forum, the largest of several bodies representing the 107 or so hostages believed to be remaining in the Gaza Strip, said on X, in Hebrew. “That is now a fact. Starting tomorrow, this country will quake. We call on the public to get ready. We are bringing the country to a stop! The abandonment is done!” It said it would provide more details by Sunday morning.
A subsequent tweet was of a graphic of a blood-red hand with the slogan: “We are stopping the country. An end to the abandonment.”
Reports in recent weeks have said that Netanyahu has resisted a U.S.-brokered deal with Hamas that the Israeli military establishment favors, in part because it wants to focus on the burgeoning military threat from Hezbollah on Israel’s border with Lebanon. Netanyahu has insisted publicly on maintaining Israeli control of a corridor between Gaza and Egypt used to smuggle weapons to Hamas. Hamas has refused that condition.
Differences over whether to accept the deal culminated on Thursday in a shouting match between Netanyahu and Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, according to multiple news outlets.
Families of Israeli-Americans held hostage brought to a standstill the Republican and Democratic conventions this summer with their appeals, leading tens of thousands of delegates from both parties in cries of “Bring them home!”
Hamas terrorists took about 250 hostages on Oct. 7, when they attacked southern Israel. More than 100 were freed in a ceasefire deal in November, shortly after the war began. Since then, Israeli troops have rescued eight hostages alive — including one man last week — and also retrieved the bodies of some hostages, including six this month whose bodies indicated they had been shot while captive in Gaza. Before Saturday, Israel estimated that slightly more than 100 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 34 of whom it believed to be dead.
