The IDF released drone footage on Tuesday that it says shows Hamas terrorists in Gaza burying a white body bag, then later staging its “discovery” for cameras and humanitarian workers. The IDF identified the remains as those of Ofir Tzarfati, who was abducted from the Supernova music festival on October 7, 2023, and whose body Israel recovered and buried nearly two years ago.
The footage was filmed in Gaza City’s Shejaia neighborhood. It appears to depict terrorists placing the bag in a fresh pit, covering it with sand, and then presenting the site as a new find.
Tzarfati’s relatives said they were shown the video, which was “a despicable manipulation designed to torpedo the [ceasefire] deal.” They said they had to open their son’s grave “for the third time.” The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said Hamas’s conduct constituted “cruel games” that deepen families’ trauma.
The International Committee of the Red Cross issued a rare public rebuke. Handling human remains must be “dignified” and consistent with international humanitarian law, it said, adding that the apparent staging was “unacceptable.”
Israeli leaders framed the episode as a breach of the US-brokered truce that began on October 10. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to carry out “powerful” strikes in Gaza, saying Hamas had violated commitments regarding the return of deceased hostages and was withholding information about others believed to be dead. Mediators warned that the ceasefire was at risk.
The episode unfolded as Egypt, with Israel’s approval, sent heavy engineering equipment and rescue teams into Gaza to help locate the remains of hostages still missing under rubble, joining Red Cross operations beyond previously restricted areas.
Israel and humanitarian officials have said there are 13 deceased hostages whose bodies have yet to be returned.
Hamas's deliberate weaponization of grief
The footage is a case study in the deliberate weaponization of grief. Killing is part of the battlefield’s horror. But to choreograph a burial and to simulate discovery in front of witnesses is to turn a human life and a human death into a prop. That is psychological warfare by design.
It is a performance intended to confuse, to control the narrative, to demonstrate power over the body of a man who was already stripped of freedom, dignity, and, ultimately, life.
A hostage is never only a prisoner. A hostage carries a family’s hope, a community’s ache, and a country’s promise that it will do everything to bring people home. To stage a burial and a recovery is to instrument human remains as a message. Israel should name this clearly: cruelty dressed up as strategy.
Our obligations remain even in war. Israel does not deny the conflict’s terrible costs in Gaza and in Israel. But there has to be a baseline: the dignity of the person; the sanctity of the hostage; the duty to preserve humanity – even when choices are hard and imperfect.
This should be troubling not only for Israelis. Parliaments that invoke human rights, advocacy groups that issue daily statements, and international bodies that count civilian harm should call out what the video depicts. The point is not to pretend the fog of war does not exist.
For Israel, the obligations are also operational. Families deserve more than solidarity. They deserve action that is steady and unsentimental, including intelligence work that maps likely burial sites, rescue when possible, negotiation when necessary, and unrelenting pressure on the perpetrators and their chain of command.
There is no moral equivalence here. On one side stands a state trying, however imperfectly, to protect its civilians, return its captives, and honor its dead within law. On the other side stands a terrorist organization that calibrates cruelty to communications goals: the white bag, the shovel, the performative reveal. These are not just images. They are indictments.
Let this, finally, be clarifying. The families have asked for clarity and action. The country should match them with focus and resolve.
Continue the search with professionalism. Keep the channels open when they produce results, and shut them when they are abused. Press the case with allies and mediators, using facts, not only fury. And insist that those who turned a grave into a set be named, sanctioned, and judged.
Israel fights to survive. It should also fight to live by a standard that refuses to let any person, under any circumstances, become a staged corpse in the service of terrorism.