IDF releases Hamas propaganda video recovered from Gaza of former child hostage
Short clip shows Ela Elyakim, 8, identifying herself and asking for freedom; family ‘asked us to share it with the world to expose Hamas’s terror,’ says military spokesman
The IDF on Sunday released footage it said it had recovered from the Gaza Strip, showing a former child hostage being recorded by Hamas for a propaganda video.
In the short clip, former hostage Ela Elyakim, 8, standing next to a flag with a Hamas logo, identifies herself and asks to be set free.
“I am Ela Elyakim, the daughter of Noam, and I’m 8 years old, and I’m asking Bibi [Netanyahu] to free us,” she says, as bandages can be seen on one of her hands. “I am a captive of Hamas.”
The clip itself was filmed by the Hamas terrorists but never publicly released. The family approved the military’s publication of the video.
Ela and her older sister, Dafna Elyakim, 15, were kidnapped together on October 7 from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, after their father, Noam, his girlfriend, Dikla, and Dikla’s son, Tomer, were all murdered by the terrorists.
The two girls were freed from captivity on November 26, after 51 days, as part of a weeklong truce which saw the release of 105 hostages.
The IDF on Sunday also published a photo of both Ela and Dafna seen standing next to the Hamas flag.
IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari said Sunday that the footage was shown earlier that day to the family, who “asked us to share it with the world to expose Hamas’s terror, to expose Hamas’s cruelty, to expose Hamas’s barbarism.”
Hagari said that Ela told the military that the Hamas terrorists “forced her to read from a script, forced her to change her clothes, and forced her to re-film this terrifying scene over and over and over again.”
In an interview with Channel 12 news in January, Dafna said that when the girls arrived in Gaza, “lots of Gazans ran after us, wanted to come and beat us up, so [the captors] got us quickly into a house there and simply locked the door.”
The two girls were kept in homes of Gazan families, moving from time to time between different homes. Ela sometimes played with the Palestinian children.
“Ela didn’t really understand [what was going on], so she was, like, okay. She was afraid when at some point she saw a gun in the house, she started panicking, she thought they were planning to kill us,” said Dafna, who noted that she also made sure her younger sister had enough to eat from their meager meals before partaking herself.
“I was afraid to go to sleep,” Dafna said. “I didn’t know what would happen in the morning, if I would wake up. I told myself all the time that there’s a chance that I’m going to sleep and won’t wake up, or that I’ll wake up but Ela won’t, or the other way around.”
After the recovery of the bodies of four hostages on Friday, it is believed that 124 people abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, with the deaths of 37 of them confirmed by Israeli authorities.
