Plight of hostages shows Israel’s ‘failure as a state,’ says brother of hostage mistakenly killed by IDF

Tuval Haim, the brother of slain hostage Yotam Haim, who was mistakenly killed by IDF troops in Gaza in December 2023, tells a crowd of thousands at Hostages Square that the continued suffering of the hostages in captivity attests to “our failure as a state.”

“How can it be that ministers take pride in thwarting deals, while hostages are being murdered in tunnels?” he asks. “How can it be that the individual who shot Yotam didn’t even receive a photo of him and didn’t know what he looked like?”

He says that it was only after IDF troops accidentally shot his brother, alongside two other hostages, Alon Shamriz and Samar Talalka, that the IDF chief of staff began to distribute photos of the hostages to soldiers in Gaza.

“They promised us that Yotam would come back, they said they knew where he was, they said he was on his way home,” he says, teary-eyed. “Today I feel like they lied to us, that they didn’t actually give every effort then and still today. They told us he was the first priority, but they actually had different goals.”

“Today is my birthday, the second birthday that I don’t get a hug and a blessing from Yotam,” he laments. “What I wish for myself is that no one will ever have to go through what I went through, that they will get their siblings back so that they can sing with them.”