Clockwise from top left: Almog Sarusi, 25, Eden Yerushalmi, 24, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, Ori Danino, 25, Carmel Gat, 40, and Alex Lubnov, 32. Credit: Hostage and Missing Families Forum. Credit: Hostage and Missing Families Forum.
6 murdered hostages

Media ‘Forgets’ to Say 6 Israeli Captives were Executed by Hamas

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Some outlets painted their vicious murders as ‘deaths,’ as if they passively died of natural causes.

By Channa Rifkin, Honest Reporting

What’s worse than waking up to the news that six Israeli hostages that were known to be alive just one week before have been murdered by their Hamas captors just days before their bodies were found by the IDF?

Well, not much. But some media are trying to paint their vicious murders as “deaths.” Deaths, as if they passively died of natural causes.

This is what happened, plain and simple: IDF soldiers managed to rescue one hostage from a tunnel earlier last week, Israeli-Bedouin Qaid Farhan al-Qadi. Shortly after, while operating in Rafah, the IDF received intelligence that there may be more live hostages being held in the area. Just one kilometer from where al-Qadi was located, the IDF discovered the bodies of six hostages believed to be alive just one week before, based on intelligence.

According to IDF Spokesperson Rear Admiral Daniel Hagari on Sunday morning, an initial assessment revealed that they were murdered by their captors most likely a day or two before they were found. An official autopsy now reveals that they were murdered 48 hours prior.

IDF soldiers met no resistance when they entered the tunnel. This would suggest that the terrorists had fled after murdering the six – speculation being that knowledge of IDF operations in the area did not give them time to flee with the hostages, perhaps the choice to kill them rather than allow them to be found alive was preferable.

But on Sunday, senior Hamas official Izzat al-Rishq blamed the six hostages’ “deaths” on Israel’s inability to agree to a ceasefire, and the United States’ continued support of “the war of genocide,” based on its “bias” for Israel. He then proceeded to claim they were killed by an Israeli airstrike.

This, despite only a few hours later the news that autopsies had apparently found fatal gunshot wounds in all six bodies.

So this was either a product of speculation, a premeditated plan by the newly appointed leader of the terror organization, Yahya Sinwar, or a last-minute excuse for the murders of these poor souls.

Either way, al-Rishq’s statement is a threat, and indicates that Hamas murdered the hostages, regardless of motivation or premeditation.

But of course, mainstream media was quick to latch onto their own diminishing buzz words.

Here are some of the disastrous headlines that HonestReporting and others have picked up since the tragic news broke Sunday morning.


Unfortunately, CNN chose not to lead with the truth. Instead, saying Hersh Goldberg-Polin “has died,” and refers to his “death” once more, and then quoting an IDF official statement explaining how he was actually murdered by Hamas terrorists just shortly before he was found.

This despicable delaying of facts is misleading, to say the least.

The same can be said of this embarrassingly mild headline from USA TODAY.


Did Hersh die peacefully in his sleep or after a long battle with an illness? This headline suggests it.

But no. Alas, he was murdered. By who, we may ask? You would not know the context just from scrolling by this headline on the site’s front page.

Say it: Hersh was brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after 11 months of captivity.

The article also says that 1,200 Israelis died during the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel. Does this word have a different connotation than we think?

The IDF and Hostages Families Forum are quoted halfway down the article to clarify it was indeed murder. But why not lead with that?

Despite The New York Times backtracking on this headline below, their initial response was to misquote U.S. President Joe Biden.


This proves their tendency to sway stories to their verbal narrative, even when the president himself uses completely different wording. As stated in the tweet above, Biden actually said this: “We have now confirmed that one of the hostages killed by these vicious Hamas terrorists was an American citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin.”

These CBS and NBC articles not only minimize the circumstances of the hostages’ death in their headlines, but they both misquote and then completely omit this part of Biden’s statement completely.

It’s a shame that the media can’t just be accurate. It’s not a complicated story. So why make it so, by playing word games and pushing agendas?

As Eitan Fischberger said on X:

The Campaign to Absolve Hamas on Social Media

Meanwhile, on social media, anti-Israel figures like Muhammad Shehada of the Hamas front Euro-Med Monitor NGO are also using mounting domestic Israeli frustration with PM Benjamin Netanyahu as a weapon to amplify Hamas’ denial of responsibility and put it all on Israel for not closing a hostage and ceasefire deal. It’s important to note that regardless of Netanyahu’s political narrative, this doesn’t diminish Hamas’ responsibility for committing murder and for starting this war in the first place.


That there is currently political turmoil within Israel over policies concerning the fate of the hostages and the desire of some to pursue continuing military pressure on Hamas is the product of a democratic society still traumatized and trying to get to grips with the impossible dilemmas inherent in this appalling situation.

Compare and contrast with the Palestinian arena where Hamas never gave its own people any choice when it embarked upon its October 7 massacre, knowing full well that the consequences would be enormous.

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