Israel military acknowledges its killing of 3 Israel hostages in Gaza, cover-up of facts

Israel’s military has finally acknowledged its direct role in the killing of three Israeli hostages in the Gaza Strip last year, admitting that it withheld the information from the public.

In December last year, Israeli forces announced that they had recovered the bodies of three hostages taken by Palestinian Resistance group, Hamas, on 7 October during its operation into Israeli-held territory. According to reports at the time, the bodies were found in a tunnel in Gaza, with many suspecting Israel of – allegedly mistakenly – killing them in an airstrike.

Nine months following the Israeli military’s start of an investigation into their deaths, according to Israel’s Channel 12, the army has now acknowledged that it was “most likely” responsible for killing the three hostages while insisting it was unaware of their presence “near a senior Hamas official who was targeted”.

Tracking Israel’s lies: MEMO in Conversation with Jennine Khalik

The three Israelis’ families have reportedly been informed of their killing by the airstrike. That comes after the Israeli military reportedly deliberately withheld details of their deaths to the public, with it having been “decided not to release this information” after an investigation “revealed that the hostages were killed in an Israeli army attack”.

The acknowledgment of its role in the killing of the three hostages and in the extensive efforts to cover

up that fact is the latest revelation of the Occupation forces’ engagement in such conduct, with details of the Israeli military’s killing, maiming, silencing and sidelining of Israeli citizens and hostages having repeatedly emerged over the past eleven months of Israel’s ongoing offensive on the Gaza Strip.

These latest revelations also further put into question Israel’s claims of Hamas’s killing of Israeli hostages throughout the conflict, with many viewing Israel’s assertions as a way to pin the blame of their deaths on the group and decrease any possibility of a ceasefire deal with it.

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