Release Our People!

"We had hoped and worked for the safe return of the four members of the family from Hamas captivity."

"I send my deepest condolences to the family. I thank the IDF and Israel Security Agency forces for their determined operation to return our hostages."

"We will continue to make every effort to bring all of our hostages home -- both the living and the dead." 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu

 

"I hope that all the captives, whether alive or not, will return."

"We don’t need to keep receiving news every week about one or two captives coming back to us in coffins."

"I hope there will be peace, quiet, and tranquility for the whole world. Enough already with all this suffering for these innocent souls."

"We were told by the army that Hamza was also killed, but his body has not been recovered. At the funeral, [Ziadna’s] children ran around shouting, ‘how can it be? Our father’s name was on the list of captives; he’s supposed to come home.’ Now, that hope is gone."

"The family is angry that the government isn’t making a deal to free the captives. Unfortunately, two days [after seeing the list], we received the heartbreaking news — for the whole family, for the entire city, for the world — that they were murdered, and this was their fate."

"It’s so very sad for the entire family. We’re all in shock."

Youssef Ziadna

 

"We continue to do everything to fulfill our supreme moral obligation -- the return of all the hostages, living and dead, to Israeli soil."

"Deep condolences to the Ziyadne family upon the discovery of the bodies of Youssef and Hamza, who were kidnapped by Hamas murderers on October 7 and were rescued in a heroic operation by our heroic soldiers."

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz

Funeral of Youssef Ziadna, who was killed in Hamas captivity in Gaza, in Rahat, Israel on Jan. 9, 2025.

The bodies of two hostages, Youssef and Hamza Ziyadne, were locaed by troops with the Israel Defense Forces during military operations in the Gaza Strip, it was announced on Wednesday. Defense Minister Israel Katz and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed "deepest sorrow for the terrible news that the Ziyadne family received today". 

On that infamous day of October 7, 2023, among other Israelis taken captive by Hamas operatives and some Palestinian civilians who had joined the terrorist invasion from Gaza into southern Israel, six Arab Muslim Bedouin Israeli citizens were kidnapped, and taken into Gaza. There were four members of the Ziadna family, and two others; Fouad al-Talalka, 22, and Qaid Farhan al-Qadi 53, from the Bedouin Israeli community of Houra, kidnapped from kibbutz Magen. Qadi was returned to Israel in August, found in an IDF rescue mission in a southern Gaza tunnel.

 

Youssef's remains, confirmed by the IDF and Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), were discovered in a tunnel in the Rafah area of southern Gaza. Hamza's death was not immediately confirmed, although the announcement stated that the discoveries in the tunnel raised 'serious concerns' for his life. "Our hearts ache. We wanted them to return to our family alive, but unfortunately they returned dead. Aisha and her brother Bilal were waiting to embrace them. This is a difficult and shocking disaster", said Youssef's brother, Ali Ziyadne.

53-year-old Youssef Ziyade and his children Hamza, 22, Bilal, 28, and Aisha, 17, residents of the Israeli Bedouin community of Rahat, were working in Kibbutz Holit, close to the border with Gaza, when they were abducted by Palestinian Hamas terrorists on October 7. As part of the November 2023 ceasefire agreement between Jerusalem and Hamas following 55 days of captivity, the two younger children, Bilal and Aisha were released.

 

Israeli authorities estimate there remain 98 hostages in Hamas captivity in Gaza, 94 of whom were abducted during the October 7 attacks. Negotiations to release the remainder of the hostages have been ongoing. Hamas insists that consideration will only be given to their release in exchange for their conditions, among which is the condition that it be agreed they can return to Gaza. Their negotiators claim that it is Israel that is holding up the release of the hostages.

In the latest round of negotiations, when Israel demanded a list from Hamas of the hostages being held, those that are alive and those whose corpses Israel insists must be released as well, Hamas responded that it would need a week or more to compile such a list. That was followed up by Hamas announcing that as a result of Israeli 'aggression' it cannot now find where most of the abductees are. There are, however, estimates by Israeli intelligence that no more than 20 of the hostages may still be alive. 

 

This is part of the Hamas excruciating psychological warfare; after having begun this conflict by inflicting pain and suffering on an unarmed civilian population, conducting an organized mass rape, perpetrating torture and mutilation on Israeli girls and women, incinerating entire families in their homes, slaughtering infants, the elderly, and taking farming villages in stealth early-morning invasions, looting and destroying, slaughtering 1,200 people, including foreign farm workers, it invokes Israeli 'aggression' in response to its own atrocities.

 

And to eke out as much misery and anguish as it possibly can, torturing the families of the vulnerable, starving and beaten hostages by circulating photographs and videos of those purportedly still alive, their gaunt and battered faces barely resembling the healthy youth they had once been as they plead for release from their living hell. Now Hamas coyly denies it can even place all of the hostages known to be in their hands, knowing the anguish they cause the hostages' loved ones and revelling in the divisions it causes between the hostage families and Israeli government authorities determined to destroy their ability to carry out any future atrocities against Israel.

 

Funeral of Youssef Ziadna, who was killed in Hamas captivity in Gaza, in Rahat, Israel on Jan. 9, 2025