The grotesque return of a body part falsely presented as one of Israel’s remaining hostages marks a new low in Hamas’s campaign of calculated cruelty. Israeli authorities confirmed today that the casket transferred by Hamas did not contain the remains of any of the 13 captives whose remains are still known to be in Gaza. The part belonged instead to Ofir Tzarfati, a 27-year-old abducted from the Nova music festival and buried in Israel last December. Ofir’s body had already been recovered and laid to rest in Kiryat Ata. His headstone, chosen by his grieving family, bore a line that now seems almost unbearably tragic: ‘You were a world and a fullness of love for life and humanity.’
Hamas knew full well that the returned remains were not one of the thirteen
Hamas, fully aware of these facts, sent the fragment anyway. They did so as if to feign compliance with an agreement they never intended to honour. It was a deliberate act of deception – grotesque in its symbolism, obscene in its intent.
The strategic use of mutilated corpses, faked returns, and psychological torment is codified Hamas doctrine. A handwritten operational directive recovered by IDF forces in Gaza, written by Yahya Sinwar himself in August 2022, lays bare the terrorist group’s plans with chilling clarity. The six-page document, analysed by the Meir Amit Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center and authenticated by the New York Times, was not merely a plan for attack. It was a blueprint for mass butchery, filmed atrocities, and the collapse of Israeli civilian morale.
Sinwar instructed his fighters to breach Israel’s border in waves, trample soldiers’ bodies, slaughter civilians, and record every horror for public dissemination. He wrote that the images must be engineered in advance, with orders to blow up tanks, set homes alight, and spray entire neighbourhoods with fuel for mass arson – acts designed ‘to sow fear and dread in the enemy’ and ignite jihadist frenzy elsewhere. This was terrorism orchestrated with military precision and propagandistic purpose.
The atrocities carried out on 7th October match this doctrine to the letter. Israel’s Unit 8200 intercepted real-time radio communications in which Hamas commanders, speaking from Gaza, ordered the terrorist foot soldiers to behead victims and carry the heads back across the border. Specific targets were named. Methods were prescribed. Killings were to be recorded and shared as proof of success.
One soldier, Sgt Adir Tahar, was among those mutilated in precisely this fashion. A nineteen-year-old Jerusalem native serving with the Golani Brigade at the Erez crossing, Adir fought and died repelling the initial Hamas incursion. His father, David, has described publicly and repeatedly that the body returned to them was missing the head. Later, Israeli forces recovered the severed head in a freezer inside a Gaza ice-cream shop. Interrogations revealed that the terrorists had attempted to sell it for ten thousand dollars, a bounty offered for the most grotesque trophies of war. The family buried the missing part in a second funeral after the full body had been reassembled.
This is the moral terrain we are dealing with. When Hamas now returns a ‘body part’ of Ofir, long dead, long buried, and pretends it is one of the living hostages, the intent is clear. It may well be a severed head or another mutilated remnant of a victim already mourned. The purpose is trauma as tactic.
Israeli forensic teams at Abu Kabir were swift to expose the lie. Sources quoted by i24news report that Western intelligence officials involved in the ‘day after’ process believe Hamas is playing for time, manipulating Donald Trump and attempting to posture as cooperative while continuing to violate every norm of war, diplomacy and humanity. Hamas knew full well that the returned remains were not one of the thirteen. It was a calculated move to obscure their true intentions and stretch the clock on ceasefire terms they never accepted in substance. They demanded heavy machinery to dig for bodies, no doubt planning instead to use it for building more tunnels. They pretended to ‘find’ the body part after in fact burying it earlier, oblivious to the IDF reportedly filming their deception from a drone. They tried to fool the Red Cross by uncovering the newly buried body part and presenting it to them for return to Israel.
The Sinwar document leaves no doubt: hostage retention, public terror, mutilation, and deceit are not excesses, they are strategy. And they have not ceased. Since the pause in combat, Hamas has executed over a hundred of its own civilians, crushed internal dissent, and continued to operate within civilian infrastructure. It has not disarmed. It has not repented. It has not even slowed down its own war practices.
The time has come for honesty. There will be no ‘day after’ until Hamas is removed as an organised force and the Palestinians are forced to renounce violence and their maximalist plans to eradicate the Jewish state of Israel. There will be no disarmament without dismantlement. There will be no protection for Gazans while they remain hostage to the murderers who claim to fight for them. The United States, having offered deadlines, demands, and guarantees, must now show resolve. Trump’s framework is being mocked in plain sight. Israel must be allowed to finish the task which Hamas insists on prolonging. The war did not stop. It was only paused. And those who are serious about peace must now accept what that pause has revealed.
Comments