IDF Soldiers Who Killed Hostages Had Orders to Shoot Men on Sight

IDF soldiers who accidentally killed three Israeli hostages in Gaza in December 2023 had been ordered to shoot all men they saw on sight, while using their judgment regarding women and children, one of the soldiers involved told the mother of one of the hostages, according to a new episode of Channel 13’s Hamakor.

Yotam Haim, 28, Samer Talalka, 25, and Alon Shamriz, 26, were kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7 massacre. They were shot and killed by Israeli soldiers in Gaza two months later, despite waving a white flag and calling for help in Hebrew.

According to the report, Talalka and Shamriz were killed immediately. Haim was wounded in the hand and fled. He later returned to the area where the other two had been shot, raised his hands in surrender, and was then killed.

Yotam’s mother, Iris Haim, has long questioned the military’s account of the incident. Hamakor reported that she played a key role in pushing for new information about the orders given to soldiers and the chain of events that led to the hostages’ deaths.

“The Israeli government says that it is most important to bring the hostages home,” Haim said. “The soldiers don’t have pictures of the hostages. So how will they know what they’re looking for?”

One soldier, identified only as D., told Haim that after two of the hostages were shot, the commander in the area ordered troops to hold their fire. But he said there was not enough time for the order to reach all soldiers before the commander called for the third hostage to come out.

“It was a matter of seconds,” D. said, explaining that he had not been able to communicate the order to soldiers positioned farther away.

Haim challenged that explanation, saying the commander knew ordinary soldiers did not have radios and that the order would have to be delivered in person.

Col. Israel Friedler, the brigade commander, also spoke with Haim and acknowledged that IDF procedure called for soldiers to kill Hamas terrorists even if they were unarmed. He said, however, that all the soldiers had heard the order to hold fire and that the shooting was a “very serious error.”

The soldier who killed Yotam disputed that claim in a phone conversation with Haim, saying he had not received the order to hold fire before firing.

The report raises renewed questions about IDF rules of engagement in Gaza, the flow of battlefield commands, and whether soldiers were given enough information to identify Israeli hostages during combat.