Former Israeli military chief says Israeli bombs killed captives in Gaza

Israel’s former military chief, Herzi Halevi, has acknowledged that Israeli bombardment killed some of the captives held by Palestinian groups in Gaza. Speaking on Sunday at a conference in New York organised by Shurat Hadin, he said Israeli forces had been unaware that captives were at the locations they struck.

Halevi argued that military pressure on Gaza had contributed to securing the release of captives. But his account also recognised that Israeli operations had caused deaths among those being held. “Our bombs killed hostages. We did not know they were there,” he told the conference, acknowledging the deaths while maintaining his claim about the role of military pressure in obtaining releases.

During the Hamas-led assault on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, 251 people were taken captive. Most subsequently came back alive in prisoner exchanges with Hamas. Approximately 87 either died while being held in Gaza or had already died before being taken into the territory. That figure encompasses both circumstances, rather than only deaths occurring during captivity.

Israeli authorities had previously declined to address allegations that captives were killed in military strikes, attributing their deaths instead to Hamas. Halevi’s remarks acknowledged that Israeli bombs had killed some of those held in Gaza, an issue that had also been raised in reporting by the Israeli press.

In October 2025, the Israeli newspaper Maariv reported, citing Israeli officials, that Israeli strikes had killed many captives. According to that report, such deaths occurred particularly in the early stages of the war.

The military’s response to the 7 October attack also included invoking the Hannibal Directive. The controversial order is intended to stop Israeli soldiers from being captured, even if doing so risks their lives. Israeli media reports said the military applied the directive along the boundary between Gaza and Israel during the opening hours of the Hamas-led assault.

Halevi, who stepped down as military chief in 2025, also addressed the failure to prevent the attack. He described the assault as “a failure that could have been prevented”, but rejected suggestions that betrayal from within had enabled it.

He said assistance to Hamas would have required an extensive network of collaborators rather than a single individual. In rejecting that explanation, Halevi said that three years after the attack, no person involved in such collaboration had been found.