By WYATT REED AND MAX BLUMENTHAL – The Grey Zone
An Israeli whose family members were held by Palestinian militants tells of friendly fire deaths and complains, “We used to think the IDF knows what it’s doing.” Meanwhile, freed captives detail “horrifying captivity trauma” from Israeli bombings.
A relative of newly-released Israeli captives has publicly accused the Israeli military of killing its own people and says Tel Aviv is blocking the victims’ families from speaking out.
In testimony delivered to Israel’s finance committee on December 3, Noam Dan, whose cousin’s husband remains in Hamas custody and who suffered the loss of two other family members in the hostilities, told legislators the Israeli military has killed its own.
“We know for sure that three people were killed by our fire, three hostages,” she declared, while demanding to be informed of whether the families of captives “were given up on” by the Netanyahu administration.
Dan’s comments appear to confirm a statement delivered from captivity in Gaza by the 34-year-old Israeli citizen Yarden Bibas. Addressing Netanyahu, the abductee stated that the Israeli military had killed his wife and two children in an airstrike, and pleaded for the prime minister to negotiate for the release of their bodies: “Bibi, you destroyed my family. You killed my wife and my children, everything in my life… I am begging you, please bring my wife and my children home.”
Freed Israeli captives have also delivered harrowing accounts of the massive Israeli bombings they endured. According to a Facebook post by Israeli television producer Hagai Levi, “From the reports of the returning abductees, it is repeated that the most horrifying captivity trauma they experienced was probably the IDF bombings.
When they tell about them, they literally tremble in front of me. The terms are of hell, of the brink of death, of an earthquake, of noise from another planet (which also caused permanent hearing damage). The fear of being murdered by the captors was zero compared to the fear of dying in the bombing.”
Israeli bombings, sanctions on Gaza threaten “mass slaughter” of Palestinians, Israeli hostages alike
After a temporary truce in Gaza ended with renewed Israeli bombardment of the enclave on December 1, Hamas accused Israel of sabotaging efforts to extend the recent ceasefire in Gaza, saying the Netanyahu administration refused to release the 130+ Palestinians it captured during the truce in exchange for the bodies of a family of captives that the group says were killed by Israeli strikes.
In a statement, Hamas spokesman Dr. Khalil Al-Hayya said the group “offered to hand over the bodies of the dead detainees resulting from ‘Israeli’ bombing, including the bodies of the Bibas family” but said “the occupation refused to deal with all these offers, as it had already decided to resume its criminal aggression.”
In a previous appearance on Israel’s Channel 13, Dan told her interviewer that “we know for sure that not only did [Israeli civilians] hear bombings, but buildings collapsed on top of their inhabitants,” and that “hostages were injured” in the attacks.
“The IDF damages the houses where they’re held,” she noted. And it’s not just Israeli bombs which are jeopardizing the safety of the captive Israelis. According to Dan, “our sanctions on Gaza endanger the health of the hostages,” because “if Gaza doesn’t have flour, they don’t have flour… It’s one to one.”
She noted that Israel’s military reputation has been left in tatters following its disastrous response to the cross-border raids carried out by Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups in early October.
“The whole notion that ‘the IDF knows and protects them’ has dissolved,” Dan explained, adding that she was “surprised” that the Israeli army “allowed us to know so much, because it completely fractured our confidence.”
“We used to think the IDF knows what it’s doing – we now know nothing’s that simple.”
In the same interview, the Israeli revealed that Tel Aviv has prohibited her from divulging information about the “very difficult experiences” endured by her relatives, telling the host: “I’m not allowed to provide details. They asked us not to.”
Anger with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been mounting in Israel since October 7, with a poll taken in early November finding that 76% of Israelis want Netanyahu to resign. Though the military campaign he oversees has managed to kill an estimated 15,899 Palestinians in indiscriminate aerial attacks, Israeli forces’ ruthless tactics have failed to win the release of the 122 civilians they say remain in Gaza.
Israeli captives freed from Gaza continue to warn that the Israeli military presents the greatest threat to those left behind in the besieged strip. Besides the bombings that have killed many Israelis in captivity, the prospect of a military rescue operation fills them with fear.
“The biggest threat currently hovering over the heads of abductees,” wrote Hagai Levy, “is a military operation to rescue them. The families of the abductees and everyone around them should shout and scream do everything so that such an operation does not take place. Its chances of mass slaughter are about a hundred times its success.”
Meanwhile, back in Jerusalem, Israeli soldiers executed a Jewish Israeli man on camera who had attempted to fight off Palestinian militants that opened fire at a Jerusalem bus stop – shooting him dead even after he threw away his gun and pleaded for his life.
Responding to the latest incident of friendly fire, Netanyahu shrugged: “that’s life.”