Harrowing footage showing the final months of six Israeli hostages murdered by Hamas has been released by the families, offering a chilling and unusually intimate glipse into life inside captivity.
The videos, filmed by Hamas and later recovered by the Israel Defense Forces during operations in Gaza, were aired on Israeli television and made public days before Hanukkah begins this year.
They show the six captives, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino and Alex Lobanov, together inside a Hamas tunnel during the early months of their captivity, long before they were murdered by their captors in August 2024.
Among the most haunting scenes is footage of the hostages marking Hanukkah in December 2023, lighting makeshift candles fashioned from paper cups and singing the traditional song Ma’oz Tzur.
The clips were filmed after roughly 80 days in captivity, eight months before all six were killed.
The hostages were killed before New Years Eve 2024, but the video shows them marking the celebration and sharing a piece of fruit, as their captors appeared to attempt to project a distorted image of daily life in captivity.
While Hamas filmed the videos for propaganda purposes, the footage stands apart from other hostage clips released during the war, which typically showed captives reading statements believed to have been dictated by their kidnappers.
Instead, the material offers longer, more candid moments between the hostages themselves.
At one point, Goldberg-Polin is heard comparing their situation to that of Jews living under Nazi rule.
‘There’s that picture of the Hanukkiah with a [Nazi flag] above it,’ he reflects in one of the clips.
Throughout the footage, the hostages’ voices can be heard as they sing, talk about their different religious backgrounds and discuss their lives before captivity.
Hours of video were recovered by Israeli forces, though until now the material had been shown only to the families of the victims. Portions were later broadcast by Channel 12’s investigative programme Uvda.
The footage was never officially released by Hamas.
