First Video of Israeli Hostage in Gaza Released by Hamas: Get me Home to My Family Urgently

On Monday evening, Hamas shared the first video from Gaza of one of its many hostages from the terrorist attack last Saturday.

The video, shared on Hamas’s Telegram account, is of 21-year-old Maya Sham, who is French-Israeli.

Haaretz have spoken to Sham’s family after the video was shared. They tell the newspaper that they are “very happy”.

– Get me home

In the video, which first shows someone bandaging Sham’s arm, she introduces herself, before saying the following:

– Right now I am in Gaza. I arrived here early Saturday morning after attending a party in Sderot. I was badly injured in the arm, and they took me to the hospital here.

The hostage drama: – Unparalleled

Furthermore, Sham says that they have taken care of her and given her medical treatment.

– I only ask you to get me home to my family, to my parents and siblings, as soon as possible. Please get me out of here as quickly as possible, she concludes.

The Israeli army, the IDF, commented on Hamas’s hostage video on X/Twitter on Monday evening. Here they write that they have been in continuous contact with Maya’s family after they conveyed the information that she was among the hostages.

– In the video published by Hamas, they try to portray themselves as humane. But they are a terrible terrorist organization that is responsible for killing and kidnapping babies, children, men, women and the elderly, writes the IDF on X.

They further write that they have used all intelligence and operational means to return all hostages – including Maya.

– Wants a prisoner exchange

Earlier on Monday evening, the spokesman for Hamas’ armed wing, Abu Obeida, stated that there are between 200 and 250 Israelis being held captive in the Gaza Strip.

He claims 200 of these are held by Hamas, while the rest are headed by other groups in Gaza.

He also stated that 22 of the hostages have been killed in Israeli airstrikes.

He further claimed that the hostages are treated with “dignity and respect”.

Here you can read all Dagbladet’s stories about the ongoing war.

Danish Jens Serup in the security company Guardian has extensive experience in hostage negotiations.

Israel’s mythical “death directive”

He recently emphasized to Dagbladet that this hostage situation is completely unprecedented, given the number of hostages. At the same time, he thought it was likely that we would eventually see videos like this.

– Hamas may eventually choose to make this public. I think we will probably see more propaganda videos at some point. Either in the form of execution videos, or videos of captured children, women and the elderly, he told Dagbladet.

Former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal, who is today head of the group’s so-called diaspora office in Qatar, stated earlier on Monday evening that Hamas will exchange Israeli prisoners and hostages for 6,000 prisoners in Israeli prisons.

He added that the considerations of civilian and military hostages are weighed differently, adding that they have enough hostages to release all Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prison.

2023-10-17 00:34:40
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