Chilling new video shows Hamas kidnapping female Israeli soldiers

Still from the video recording of the capture of five young women after the murder of their colleagues

“We decided to release, do it now and expose ourselves, undress on television , to reveal the most sensitive things for the families, and we are doing this because we want our government to wake up,” Mr. Elbag told Channel 12 on Wednesday.

Negotiations between Israel and Hamas over the hostages broke down early this month due to seemingly insurmountable differences.

Even if negotiations for the partial release of the hostages are achieved, the five young IDF conscripts are unlikely to be included in the negotiations. Priority is expected to be given to the wounded, children, elderly and civilian women held captive by Hamas. 

The vast majority of the remaining 128 Israeli hostages are civilians, not combatants.

Body camera footage

The three-minute video was captured by a Hamas militant's body camera. It was confiscated by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and edited so that it did not show the bodies of killed soldiers.

Liri Elbag, Karina Ariev, Agam Berger, Daniella Gilboa and Naama Levy, still dressed in pajamas because the base was captured at dawn, look scared in the video. 

They can be seen in a room full of dozens of Hamas fighters in camouflage, armed with machine guns, shouting at young women and pushing them against the wall to be handcuffed.

>When one of the women tries to say in English that she has friends in Palestine (she was reportedly a volunteer for a charity helping the West Bank), the attackers shout at her, with one of them saying: «Our brothers died from -for you, we will shoot everyone

Still from body camera video of Hamas attacker

At least three women were injured, their faces stained with blood.

In one chilling moment, a fighter wearing Hamas's signature green headband points to one of the young women sitting on the floor in Snoopy pajamas. In Arabic, he tells the man filming the video: “Here are the girls, the women who can get pregnant. These are Zionists.”

Later he looks at the woman and says in English: “You are so beautiful.”

The women were then seen being led away from the base. some of them are clearly injured and limp towards the pickup truck.

The Hostage Families Forum, a group that advocates for Israeli captives, on Wednesday described the video as “a humiliating testament to the country’s failure to bring home hostages who have been abandoned for 229 days.”

They added: “The Israeli government must not lose not for a second – it must return to the negotiating table today!” 

Families say daughters were abandoned

Families of female soldiers complained that their daughters were abandoned on a base that had no military reinforcements and was not considered a high-risk duty station. 

The abducted women's job was to monitor the movements of Hamas militants and Palestinian civilians across the border into the Gaza Strip.

Reports in local media indicate that some of the women warned military leaders about increased activity in the lead-up to the attack. October, but their messages were rejected as insignificant.