The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) announced Thursday that it had retrieved the bodies of two hostages, including an American citizen, from Gaza. They had both been murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
As Breitbart News reported in December 2023, Judy Weinstein and her husband Gad Haggai, both in their seventies, had been thought to have been abducted but were in fact murdered; their bodies were taken to Gaza.
On Thursday, the IDF and Israel Security Agency (ISA) announced:
In a joint IDF and ISA operation tonight (Thursday), the bodies of the couple Judi Lynn Weinstein and Gad Haggai were recovered from the Khan Yunis area in the Gaza Strip.
Judi Lynn Weinstein and Gad Haggai, members of Kibbutz Nir Oz, were brutally murdered and abducted from the Kibbutz on October 7th, 2023 by terrorists of the Palestinian Mujahideen terrorist organization. The couple Judi and Gad, parents of four, were 70 (Judi) and 72 (Gad) at the time of their deaths.
The rescue operation was conducted by IDF troops in coordination with the Intelligence Directorate and special forces. The operation was made possible as a result of precise intelligence provided by the Hostage Task Force, the Intelligence Directorate, and the ISA.
Following an identification procedure carried out by the National Institute of Forensic Medicine, the Israel Police, and the IDF Manpower Directorate’s Hostage Task Force, the family and the community of Nir Oz were notified.
The IDF and ISA send their deepest condolences to the families and will continue to make all efforts possible to bring home all the hostages as soon as possible.
Though the announcement concerns dead hostages instead of living ones, it is the first such announcement in many months, and the first since Israel’s current offensive in Gaza, “Operation Gideon’s Chariots,” began.
There are currently over 50 hostages still in Gaza, including at least 20 thought to be living. Edan Alexander, released last month, was the last living American hostage still being held by Hamas in Gaza.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of Trump 2.0: The Most Dramatic ‘First 100 Days’ in Presidential History, available for Amazon Kindle. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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