Eden Yerushalmi, 24, was one of the prisoners captured by Hamas on October 7, 2023 and found dead last week. Now Hamas has released a video of the young woman while she was in captivity.
– This is a propaganda film to the highest degree, says TV4 Nyhetern’s foreign commentator Elisabet Frerot.
On October 7, Eden Yerushalmi was working as a bartender at the Nova music festival when she was kidnapped by the militant group.
Almost a year later, she and five other hostages were killed, likely by their captors. Israeli forces found them in an underground tunnel this past weekend, according to the Israeli military. According to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, all six hostages have been shot dead.
Now Hamas has released an undated video of Eden Yerushalmi while she was in captivity. Several international media have reported on the video, among others Sky News.
– We don’t know when it was recorded, whether it was just before they were killed last week or earlier. What we know is that it happened in captivity and that Hamas had control over everything they said, says TV4 Nyhetern’s foreign commentator Elisabet Frerot.
Eden Yerushalmi’s family has approved a short sequence, 12 seconds, of the two-minute video.
“To my family. I miss and love you so much,” Yerushalmi says in the video.
Seen as propaganda
The video is seen as war propaganda by Hamas, and the captives are believed to have been pressured or forced to say certain things. In the video, the woman expresses that Israel should agree to a cease-fire agreement that means the release of the Hamas hostages.
– This is a propaganda film to the highest degree. In addition, it is doubly cruel. It was only released when she was dead, so on the same day that the family buried Eden, they heard these appeals, says commentator Elisabet Frerot.
Yesterday 22:28
This is what the circumstances behind the released hostage film look like
“Hamas tries to strengthen protests”
In recent days, hundreds of thousands of residents of Israel have protested against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as a result of dissatisfaction with his failure to bring home the hostages alive.
– They demand that Prime Minister Netanyahu agree to a deal with Hamas to get the hostages released. Hamas is of course trying to strengthen those protests. There are already many Israelis who believe that Eden and the other five would be alive today if Netanyahu had not been so contradictory in the peace negotiations, says Elisabet Frerot and continues:
– But one should also not forget that they would also have been alive if Hamas had not bloodily executed them with shots to the neck. It is a reminder that Hamas is a terrorist organization and they are now also threatening to do the same thing again if Israel tries to free more hostages militarily.