The IDF could not confirm the cause of death of killed Gaza hostages Ron Sherman and Nick Beiser, the military confirmed in a Wednesday statement.
IDF representatives arrived at the families of the kidnapped soldiers, Sgt. Ron Sherman and Cpl. Nick Beiser, in order to inform them of the findings regarding the circumstances of their deaths in Hamas captivity late Tuesday night.
Their bodies were retrieved from a Hamas tunnel by the IDF in Jabalya on December 14, 2023, together with the body of Elia Toledano. Also, on December 12, 2023, the IDF recovered the bodies of Aden Zakaria and Ziv Dado from the same area.
Close to where the bodies were found, the IDF attacked a tunnel in which the commander of the northern division of Gaza, Ahmad Al Ghandour, was killed. The investigation shows that at the time of the attack, the IDF did not know about the presence of hostages in the area. Also, the forces who found their bodies during searches in the tunnel did not have prior intelligence about their presence.
Ron Sherman’s mother, Maya, published a post yesterday in which she accused the IDF of mistakingly killing her son.
“The results of the investigation: Ron was indeed murdered,” she wrote. “Not by Hamas. Think more in the direction of Auschwitz and the showers but without Nazis and without Hamas as the cause. No accidental shooting, no report, premeditated murder, bombings with poisonous gases.”
According to her, the IDF filled the tunnel in which he was held with gas, and his son was poisoned to death.
“Ron was kidnapped because of the criminal negligence of all the senior officials of the army and the damned government who gave the order to eliminate him in order to settle a score with some terrorist from Jabalya.” The mother claimed that “they found that he also had several crushed fingers, apparently due to his desperate attempts to get out of the poison grave that the IDF buried in him when he tried to breathe air, but he only breathed IDF poison. There is no future for this country if this is what they did to you after they abandoned you that Saturday. What was the decision if Bibi’s son was there in the terrorist’s tunnel or Gallant’s grandson? Or the son of Hertzi Halevi? Would they also have been poisoned with gas bombs?”
Findings of the reports
According to a statement released by the IDF, the pathology report shows that no signs of injury or gunshots were found on their bodies, so they were not killed as a result of a direct hit from the attack.
The statement continues, “Due to the condition of the bodies, it is not possible to determine the cause of death. At this stage, it cannot be ruled out or confirmed that they were killed as a result of suffocation, poisoning, or residual aspects of an IDF attack or a Hamas operation. Samples were taken to carry out further toxicological testing, which may reveal more details later. As mentioned, at this stage, it is not possible to determine the cause of death.”
The IDF and its commanders have promised to continue to update them with any verified information and new findings.
The original story
The bodies of three Hamas hostages – Nick Beiser (28), Ron Sherman (19), and Elia Toledano (19) – were recovered in Gaza by the IDF in mid-December. Soldiers from the 551st Brigade and Unit 504 in the Intelligence Division, under the command of Division 162, helped rescue the bodies from Hamas captivity.
Cpl. Nick Beiser, from Beersheba, was kidnapped while serving as a driver at the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration on October 7.
Sgt. Ron Sherman, from Lehavim, was kidnapped while serving as a coordination and liaison officer at the Gaza Coordination and Liaison Administration on October 7.
When Sherman was kidnapped, he was not on duty. Sherman woke up to explosions outside his base and went to a bomb shelter in shorts and a t-shirt, without a weapon.
Elia Toledano was kidnapped from the Re’im music festival on October 7 alongside his girlfriend Mia Schem, who was released from captivity last month as a part of the hostage-prisoner exchange deal between Israel and Hamas. Schem had appeared in a propaganda video released by Hamas where her right arm appeared to be injured. After she was released, she appeared in a number of interviews with major Israeli news networks, detailing her captivity.
An identification procedure was carried out by medical officials, military rabbis, and forensic experts.