IDF says Hamas video purporting to show 3 hostages being released is propaganda
Footage appears to show Avital Aladjem, from Kibbutz Holit, freed at Gaza border along with neighbor’s children; IDF: Footage is days old, from shortly after abduction
The Israel Defense Forces Arabic-language spokesperson said Hamas was trying to “alter the truth” of its brutal massacre Saturday with footage broadcast by Al Jazeera claiming to show a woman and her two children being released from the terror group’s captivity.
Al Jazeera on Wednesday broadcast the footage, portraying it as new footage of Hamas releasing hostages.
However, the military said the video was several days old and the incident occurred on Saturday at the height of Hamas’s devastating onslaught on southern communities.
The video showed a woman, Avital Aladjem, in a blue and pink jacket walking toward a child and the two embracing, as gunmen walk away. She is said to be holding a second child.
They appear to be near the Gaza border fence.
“After the entire world saw its ugly, true face as a barbaric organization that executed hundreds of innocent women and children in a terrorist attack and hideous massacre, Hamas is trying to alter the truth through the theatrics of posting a propaganda video via its media mouthpieces,” said the military’s Arabic-language spokesperson Avichay Adraee, hours after the footage was broadcast.
“The truth is clear and obvious, and its character will become clearer in the coming days. Hamas is worse than ISIS, and we will continue to strike it hard without stopping,” he added.
بعد ان شاهد العالم كله وجهها القبيح والحقيقي كمنظمة بربرية قامت بإعدام مئات الأبرياء الأطفال والنساء في هجوم إرهابي ومجزرة بشعة تحاول حماس تغيير الحقيقة من خلال مسرحية نشر فيديو دعائي عبر أبواقها الاعلامية. الحقيقة واضحة وجلية وسوف تتضح معالمها أكثر في الأيام المقبلة. حماس أسوأ… https://t.co/tLFu8n4nBg
— افيخاي ادرعي (@AvichayAdraee) October 11, 2023
The airing of the footage appeared to demonstrate Hamas’s efforts to deflect the world’s gaze from the brutality of its devastating onslaught Saturday, when Palestinian terrorists rampaged through the south of Israel slaughtering some 1,300 people, the vast majority of them civilians, and abducting at least 100 captives to Gaza. Some 3,000 were injured.
Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry said 1,300 in the Palestinian enclave have been killed in retaliatory Israeli strikes. Israel said it is targeting terrorist infrastructure and all areas where Hamas operates or hides and that Israeli forces have killed some 1,500 Hamas terrorists who infiltrated into its territory since Saturday.
In an interview with Channel 12 Wednesday, Aladjem recounted her harrowing experience with Hamas terrorists.
She said she was hiding out in her home’s safe room with one neighbor and communicating with her next-door neighbor, Adi Vital-Kaploun, via WhatsApp, when Hamas terrorists blew up Aladjem’s front door and entered the house at 1:30 p.m. Saturday.
The women dashed to hide from the terrorists. The neighbor who was hiding together with Aladjem was discovered by the gunmen, shot, and killed. Aladjem was also found and pulled out of the closet where she was hiding. The gunmen then brought her Vital-Kaploun’s children from next door, ages 4.5 months and 4, and began walking the three of them through the kibbutz.
Adi Vital-Kaploun, a dual Israeli-Canadian citizen, was killed by the terrorists, her relatives told Canadian media on Thursday.
In an act that “certainly saved their lives,” Vital-Kaploun told her father and her husband to stay where they were, and not to come to them, her cousin-in-law, Aaron Smith, said in an interview with CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning. “And however she was able to convince the terrorists that murdered her to take her kids to her neighbor — she saved their lives as well. She’s a hero.”
Said Aladjem: “Everything was destroyed and full of blood; they took us from house to house with shooting all around, as they burned the houses and the cars.”
“Me and the kids and the terrorists,” said Aladjem, weeping as she spoke. “‘Quick, quick,’ they kept saying.”
After the terrorists brought Aladjem and the children into Gaza, they left them standing alone. Thinking on her feet, Aladjem turned around with the children and began walking with them back to the kibbutz. She passed more gunmen and hid with the children in the sand dunes, slowly making her way back.
“We continued and continued and I believed we’d get back home,” she said, adding that she had no idea how much time had passed.
When they entered the kibbutz, Aladjem saw other kibbutz members leaving in their cars and told the 4-year-old that he would see his father soon.
The three were taken to the nearby community of Gvulot, where the children were eventually reunited with their father.
