The soldiers who accidentally shot three Israeli hostages during the Israel-Hamas War had orders to shoot all men they saw on sight, and to "use their judgment" when it came to women and children, one of the soldiers told a hostage's mother in a new episode of Hamakor on Channel 13.
Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Talalka, 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26, were all taken captive during Hamas's attack on October 7, 2023. In December that same year, IDF soldiers accidentally shot and killed all three in Gaza, despite them waving a white flag and calling out "Help" in Hebrew.
Two of the hostages, Talalka and Shamriz, had been shot and killed immediately. The third, Yotam, had been wounded in the hand and fled. Soon afterward, he returned to the location where the other two hostages had been killed, raising his arms in surrender, and was killed.
Iris Haim, Yotam's mother, had long questioned the official military narrative of that day's events. According to Hamakor, she was crucial in their uncovering of the truth of the military's actions and orders.
"The Israeli government says that it is most important to bring the hostages [home]. The soldiers don't have pictures of the hostages. So how will they know what they're looking for?" she said.
One soldier, D., who had been on-site, told Iris that the commander in the area had given the soldiers an order to hold their fire after two of the hostages had been shot, but hadn't provided enough time for the order to be conveyed to all the troops before calling for the third hostage to come out.
"It was a matter of seconds," D. said, explaining how he wasn't able to communicate the commander's order to soldiers positioned further away from the commander.
"The commander knew that the ordinary soldiers didn't have a walkie-talkie, and that you would in fact need to run to them," Iris challenged D.'s story. "How did he expect you to do that?"
Brigade Commander admits IDF protocol calls for killing unarmed terrorists
Col. Israel Friedler, commander of the brigade, also admitted to Iris that it was standard procedure for Hamas terrorists to be killed by soldiers even if they had no weapons on them.
However, Friedler also attested to Iris that all the soldiers had heard the order to hold their fire, and that they had done so anyway in a "very serious error."
The soldier who shot Yotam denied Friedler's claim in a phone conversation with Iris, saying that they hadn't received notification of the order by the time he fired the shot.