‘An attempt to sow panic’: Israelis receive recorded calls of hostages pleading for help
Apparent spam calls use voice of Yosef-Haim Ohana from Hamas video released earlier this month; Hostages Forum say its members also received calls, stresses it is not behind them
Israelis reported receiving recorded voice messages overnight Friday and Saturday of hostages pleading to be released and sounds of explosions in the background, with the National Cyber Directorate saying that the calls were an apparent attempt to sow public distress.
The calls, which came from unidentified numbers, used recordings taken from a propaganda video released by Hamas in May of hostages Yosef-Haim Ohana and Elkana Bohbot.
In the video, Ohana is seen sitting up next to Bohbot, who is lying down on a mattress. “What will happen when I soon won’t be able to be near him and he will remain alone?” Ohana says in the recording.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum released a statement saying that its members had also received the voice messages and that the forum was not behind the recordings.
The National Cyber Directorate said the messages were “an attempt to create panic among the public.”
The directorate added that receiving such a call does not harm the phone, but the call should not be answered, and the number should be blocked.
The directorate said the calls were received from the following numbers: 079-9444000; 074-7375311; 072-2604986.
Since taking 251 hostages on October 7, 2023, Hamas has often published videos of the captives as a form of propaganda and psychological warfare.
Bohbot and Ohana were both kidnapped by terrorists at the Supernova festival while trying to help injured people.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 58 hostages, including 57 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF, and 20 are believed to be alive. There are grave concerns for the well-being of three others, Israeli officials have said.
Hamas released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March, and one additional hostage, a dual American-Israeli citizen, in May as a “gesture” to the United States. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the 58 hostages.
The Times of Israel Community.