Video includes images of abducted soldier making coffee with his captors; family castigates ‘godless’ Hamas for skewed propaganda
The Palestinian terror group Hamas on Sunday released previously unseen footage of Gilad Shalit, the IDF soldier held in five-year captivity in Gaza from 2006 to 2011. The footage shows Shalit smiling as he tends to a barbecue, apparently surrounded by his guards.
The video also shows Shalit preparing coffee with his captors and talking on the phone.
In a statement, the Shalit family said his “godless captors, who held Gilad hostage, stop at nothing to present a skewed picture that in no way reflects the five and a half years he spent doing his best to survive in captivity, solitude and daily fear.”
This is the third such publication by the terror group in recent days. Last Wednesday, Hamas released an image of the soldier with one of his guards, Abd al-Rahman al-Mubashar, who, the group said, had died recently. The photo, which appears to be a screenshot of a video screened hours later, shows Shalit standing next to al-Mubashar.
The video — aired later on Hamas TV — again shows a smiling Shalit with some of his guards.
Shalit was seized from his tank in a cross-border raid by Hamas gunmen that left two of his comrades dead. He was held in Gaza for five years until an October 2011 prisoner swap saw him released in exchange for 1,027 Palestinian prisoners.
A year after Shalit was freed, the Hamas military wing released a video dramatizing and documenting his abduction and the killing of two other Israel Defense Forces soldiers in its June 25, 2006, terrorist raid into Israel.
The 45-minute propaganda film — broadcast by the Izz ad-Din al-Qassam Brigades — showed the planning, preparation, and kidnapping of Shalit on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border. The film concluded with previously unseen footage of Shalit handed to Egypt by Hamas strongman Ahmed Ja’abari.
As reported by The Times of Israel