Family and friends mourn death of hostage Youssef Ziyadne, blame government inaction
Relatives say they had held out hope the 53-year-old father of 19 would be freed alive in an imminent deal; released hostage Farhan al-Qadi eulogizes his childhood friend
The family and friends of Youssef Ziyadne, whose body was recovered from Gaza 15 months after he and his son were abducted by Hamas terrorists, on Wednesday mourned the loss of the 53-year-old father of 19 while directing their anger at the government for failing to rescue their loved ones.
Youssef’s body was found Tuesday night in a tunnel in the southern Gaza Strip, along with findings that the IDF said were linked to his son Hamza Ziyadne, 22, who was taken hostage alongside him during the October 7, 2023, terror onslaught.
Members of the Ziyadne family said the military informed them Hamza’s body was also recovered from the Strip, although the IDF did not confirm this, saying only that the findings raised “grave concern” for the 22-year-old’s life.
Youssef and Hamza were kidnapped along with another two of Youssef’s children, Bilal, 18, and Aisha, 17, while working in the cowshed at Kibbutz Holit near the Gaza border.
Bilal and Aisha were released on November 30, 2023, after more than 50 days in Hamas captivity. Until Tuesday, Youssef and Hamza were presumed alive.
The cause of death was still under investigation by the IDF, though according to initial assessments, did not occur recently.
“We wanted them to come back to the family alive,” Youssef’s brother Ali Ziyadne told Hebrew media outlet Ynet. “It’s a difficult and shocking disaster.”
Ali said he had believed his brother and nephew would be released from Gaza soon, as negotiators in Doha have been pushing for a new hostage release and ceasefire deal.
“Every day, the boys and I checked to see if there was anything new,” he said. “We thought that they would be released in the new deal because we saw reports that they were among those who would be released, we had hope that they were still alive.”
“Today, after we received the message that they had been found, we couldn’t digest it and we said to ‘check, maybe you’re wrong, maybe they’re alive, don’t rush,'” he recounted. “In the end, all we could do was accept the hard news that tore our hearts.”
In comments to the Hebrew press, Youssef’s relative Odeh Ziyadne accused the government of intentionally allowing the hostages to die.
“They have decided that they want the hostages dead. That’s the problem,” he charged. “Do you know why? Because they don’t want witnesses against them in a commission of inquiry — if there even is one. They don’t want witnesses from among the hostages.”
“We had hope, Youssef was on the list,” he said. “They could have rescued them alive.”
Repeating that “the government has indicated that it does not want them alive,” Odeh slammed Defense Minister Israel Katz for issuing a statement on the recovery of Youssef’s body and findings linked to Hamza before all members of the large Bedouin family had been informed.
“The defense minister forgot that he is the defense minister, he ran to tell the other guys about the bodies, to check it off,” he accused. “I hope that the fate of the other families will be different to that of my family. On October 7, they were alive.”
Speaking to the Kan public broadcaster, an unnamined relative of Ziyadne said that “what they [Hamas] did on October 7, regardless of whether it was to Bedouins or Jews, is not allowed in Islam.”
“We lost sons, it doesn’t matter if they were Jewish or Muslim,” the relative said. “They all have mothers and children waiting for them. We’ve been in mourning for 15 months, unfortunately, it ended like this. It hurt a lot to hear it.”
The reverberations of Youssef’s death — and fear for Hamza’s life — were felt far beyond the Ziyadne family and extended across the city of Rahat, where they live in the Ziyadne neighborhood named for their extensive clan.
Rahat Mayor Talal Alkernawi lamented that the city had been “waiting to receive them alive, to embrace the family,” but now would not be able to.
He said the city would observe a day of mourning on Thursday and that municipal services and the education system would be on strike.
Former hostage Farhan al-Qadi eulogized his former neighbor and friend.
“Everyone in our home is crying, we hoped to see them alive,” said Qadi, who was rescued by the IDF from a tunnel in Gaza in August 2024.
“Yousef, my friend, my neighbor, my childhood friend. It’s very hard. We need to end this war and bring them home, everyone. He was a friend to everyone, a father to everyone, he doesn’t deserve this — nobody does.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum mourned the loss of Youssef, who it said was “a man of people and dialogue, a pillar of his family and a significant figure in his community.”
“The deal being formulated will come too late for Youssef — who was abducted alive and should have returned that way,” the forum said. “Every day in captivity endangers the lives of the hostages who have managed to survive for 15 months and endangers the ability to recover the fallen for proper burial.”
It is now believed that 94 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.
