Intel on nonexistent pregnant hostage was ‘impossible to ignore,’ says IDF official

Faulty indications early in the war that a Hamas-held hostage was pregnant and had given birth in captivity were “impossible to ignore” at the time, an Israel Defense Forces intelligence official involved in hostage negotiations said Sunday.

Speaking to Kan public radio, the unnamed colonel on Israel’s hostage negotiating team — who goes by the alias “K” — said that she had spent weeks focused solely on the worrying case, which turned out to have been an unfounded rumor.

“As a woman and a human being, it was very difficult to even imagine this situation,” she said. “We received a few indications that it happened, and they were indications that were impossible to ignore. Thankfully, when we jump to the end of the incident it becomes clear that this never happened.”

K said that the case was “the only thing I focused on” for two entire weeks. “My goal was to understand who she was, where she was located and what immediate solution we could provide for the situation,” she said.

In November 2023, Israeli officials cleared for publication that one of the hostages kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught had likely given birth in captivity.

Rumors soon began to swirl around the hostage’s identity as the IDF and Defense Ministry remained silent on the matter. The woman was presumed by officials to have been in her ninth month of pregnancy, though they lacked any concrete evidence.

At one point Channel 13 claimed the purportedly pregnant hostage was Nutthawaree Munkan, a Thai foreign worker who was freed as part of a truce deal between Israel and Hamas in November 2023.

After several outlets contacted foreign workers’ organizations, the freed hostage’s relatives, and Thai officials regarding the matter, the rumor was thoroughly debunked. Sunday’s interview marked the first time an IDF official has spoken publicly about the affair.

“After we used all the means at our disposal, both intelligence-gathering and consultations with experts from all relevant fields… we managed to reach a point where we were able to rule out this story,” said K.

With just one deceased hostage now remaining in Gaza following the return of slain Thai national Sudthisak Rinthalak, the intelligence official told the outlet that she has been “imagining this moment since October 7.”

“The processes were very challenging, full of difficulties, full of moments where we really thought that maybe we wouldn’t succeed. That didn’t make us stop. But I also had concerns about other big things that fortunately did not happen,” she said.