Hamas was caught on video faking the retrieval of a body of one of the 13 dead Israeli hostages whose bodies it was supposed to hand over two weeks ago under President Donald Trump’s ceasefire agreement.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) released the video of Hamas’s ruse, as well as a press statement:
Contrary to Hamas’ claims of difficulties locating the bodies of the deceased hostages, yesterday (Monday) Hamas operatives were documented removing body remains from a structure that had been prepared in advance and burying them nearby.
Shortly thereafter, the Hamas terrorist organization summoned representatives of the Red Cross and staged a false display of discovering a deceased hostage’s body.
This footage clearly shows that the Hamas terrorist organization is attempting to create a false impression of efforts to locate the bodies, while in fact holding deceased hostages whose remains it refuses to release as required by the agreement. This is accompanied by false claims of shortages in engineering equipment, equipment that is clearly unnecessary for the transfer of remains, and therefore these claims do not constitute an obstacle to the return of the remaining deceased hostages.
Israel launched airstrikes Tuesday night on Hamas positions in Gaza in response to the ruse, as well as in response to an attack in which an IDF soldier was killed by Hamas terrorists emerging from a tunnel.
Following the airstrikes, Hamas reportedly claimed to have found the bodies of two additional Israeli hostages, including Sahar Baruch. Baruch, 25, a hostage abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel, was either murdered by Hamas in captivity, or killed inadvertently by Israeli forces during an attempted rescue; either way, Hamas published images of his corpse at the time, so it certainly had access to his body.
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 the recent e-book, “The Zionist Conspiracy (and how to join it),” now available on Audible. He is also the author of the e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
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