Journalism of Courage
The Israeli Defence Forces (IDF) on Tuesday released a video, purportedly showing Hamas staging the recovery of partial remains of hostage Ofir Tzarfati. Hamas had claimed that the partial remains were discovered on Monday.
But an Israeli drone captured Hamas members bringing the remains of Tzarfati out of a building and placing them in a freshly dug hole in the ground in the Shejaiya neighborhood of Gaza City. The Hamas operatives were then seen covering the body in dirt and pretending to uncover it for the first time in front of the Red Cross.
Tzarfati was kidnapped by Hamas from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, where he was celebrating his 27th birthday. He was declared dead in November and in December, his body was recovered by the IDF and Shin Bet in an operation in the Gaza Strip and brought back to Israel for burial. Additional remains of Tzarfati were recovered and brought to Israel in March 2024.
On Tuesday, after more remains were returned by Hamas, Israeli authorities notified the family of Tzarfati.
“I stand here today, forced once again to say goodbye to my son,” Rishel Tzarfati, the mother of the slain hostages, said in a statement issued through the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. “We thought we had closed the circle, that we were able to lay Ofir to rest, but today we discovered we never received all of him. I can’t grasp this. How can you bury your child in installments?”
Sharing the video of the Hamas ‘discovery’, the IDF said, “Despite claiming difficulty locating the bodies of deceased hostages, Hamas continues to hold and manipulate the remains it refuses to release under the agreement.”
Hamas has so far returned the bodies of 15 of the 28 slain hostages. The militant group has insisted that it did not know the location of the remaining bodies, a claim Israel has refused to accept.
“Hamas’ claims of lacking engineering equipment are baseless; such tools are unnecessary for the transfer of remains and do not prevent the return of the deceased hostages,” the IDF said.
Meanwhile, the failure of Hamas to return the remains of all the hostages has reached a tipping point in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Tuesday he has ordered the army to immediately carry out “powerful strikes” in Gaza.
Netanyahu called the return of Tzarfati’s remains a “clear violation” of the ceasefire agreement, which requires Hamas to return all Israeli hostage remains as soon as possible.
