Israel conducted a daring mission Wednesday to retrieve the body of a hostage who was kidnapped and murdered, and published an analysis that concluded that six other hostages were murdered by Hamas, not killed by an airstrike.
Hamas has often claimed that Israeli hostages who have died in captivity were killed by Israeli airstrikes. The purpose of such claims is to dissuade airstrikes on Hamas terrorists, and to demoralize the Israeli public. Such inadvertent strikes have occurred, and last December Israeli soldiers mistakenly shot and killed three escaped hostages in northern Gaza who were trying to signal to them, and who were mistaken for terrorists luring soldiers into a trap.
However, in the cases of Yagev Buchstab, Alexander Dancyg, Avraham Munder, Yoram Metzger, Nadav Poppelwell, and Haim Perry, the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) concluded that Hamas had likely executed…
