After mistaken killing of hostages, Halevi says IDF ‘doesn’t shoot a person who raises his hands’

Speaking to troops of the 99th Division in the Gaza Strip, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi says, “hopefully we will have another opportunity for hostages to come to us and we will do the right thing,” days after soldiers shot mistakenly three hostages dead in Gaza City’s Shejaiya neighborhood.

“I tell you in a very simple way, the incident is very difficult and painful, and no one will come and say otherwise,” Halevi says to the soldiers.

“I’m telling you that this is an incident that very easily could have not happened,” he says.

“And think, why did we maneuver [in Gaza]? We have set three goals, to dismantle Hamas, to restore security to the residents of the [border communities]… and the third mission is to recover the hostages,” Halevi says.

“You see two people, they have their hands up and no shirts, take two seconds,” he says to the soldiers, referring to Friday’s tragic incident, where all three hostages were shirtless and one was waving a white flag.

“And I want to tell you something no less important, what if it is two Gazans with a white flag who come out to surrender, do we shoot at them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not,” Halevi says.

“Even those who fought and now put down their weapons and raise their hands, we capture them, we don’t shoot them. We extract a lot of intelligence from the prisoners we have, we have over a thousand already,” he tells the soldiers.

Halevi says, “We don’t shoot them because the IDF doesn’t shoot a person who raises his hands. This is a strength, not a weakness.”