Video Shows Hostages Lighting Hanukkah Candles in Hamas Tunnel Before Murder
“The footage, obtained by the IDF, shows the six hostages, Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Alexander Lobanov, and Almog Sarusi, who were murdered by Hamas in 2024.”
Shocking videos recovered from Gaza show six Israeli hostages lighting Hanukkah candles in December 2024, all of whom were later murdered by Hamas terrorists.
Weak and emaciated hostages pray and sing as they light the festive candles, a video aired by Israeli TV channel Keshet 12 reveals. The footage originally recorded by Hamas for propaganda purposes showed hostages giving each other hope as they celebrated Hanukkah. Another video showed them marking New Year’s Eve 2024.
“The captives are seen lighting Hanukkah candles fashioned out of paper cups and singing the Hanukkah song ‘Ma’oz Tzur,'” The Times of Israel reported Friday. “The hostages were also filmed marking New Year’s Eve 2024 and eating a piece of fruit, as their captors attempted to show a different reality of captivity.
The footage, taken two months after they were taken hostage on October 7, 2023, features six hostages: American citizen Hersh Goldberg-Polin (23), Eden Yerushalmi (24), Ori Danino (25), Alex Lubanov (33), Almog Sarusi (27), and Carmel Gat (40).
This is chilling. Footage recovered by the IDF in Gaza shows six Israeli hostages lighting Hanukkah candles two months after being taken captive.
All six were later murdered. They are: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi. pic.twitter.com/9jx3KM3Z7x
— Aviva Klompas (@AvivaKlompas) December 11, 2025
Months later, Hamas terrorists would murder all six of them and dump their bodies in a tunnel in southern Gaza. Israeli troops recovered their remain in August 2025 during a ground offensive in the terrorist stronghold of Rafah.
“According to intelligence assessments, the six hostages were held for most of their captivity in the same Rafah tunnel complex where they were murdered at the end of August, as Hamas terrorists guarding them realized that IDF forces were nearing the site,” Israel’s Ynetnews reported. “The army believes the footage is from the hostages’ first and only Hanukkah in captivity, recorded in December two years earlier.”
We will never forgive and we will never forget how our hostages were treated by Hamas in Gaza.
Despite the horrific torture and humiliation, our brave and courageous hostages never lost hope, and even continued to light Hanukkah candles to bring light into a world of darkness. pic.twitter.com/wv3PSnbQZk
— Danny Danon 🇮🇱 דני דנון (@dannydanon) December 11, 2025
In another video, fearful hostages are made to shave each other’s heads, making them resemble inmates of Nazi concentration camps.
Newly surfaced video of hostages subsequently murdered by Hamas, shows Alex shaving Hersh & Ori’s heads in captivity – part of the group of six, including Carmel, Eden & Almog.
Alex says: “There’s the movie The Pianist, right? From the Holocaust .. so I’m the barber now.”
A… pic.twitter.com/H69tu3ie2d— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) December 12, 2025
The Jerusalem Post reported Thursday:
IDF footage of six Israeli hostages lighting Hanukkah candles in captivity months before they were murdered by Hamas was spread across Israeli media on Thursday.
The footage, obtained by the IDF, shows the six hostages, coined the “Beautiful Six,” who were murdered by Hamas in Rafah and found by the IDF in August 2024 – Carmel Gat, Eden Yerushalmi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Alexander Lobanov, and Almog Sarusi.
Danino is seen lighting small candles balanced on cups while the group sings Shehecheyanu, the blessing said on reaching a special moment. After lighting the first night’s candles, the group sang several traditional songs.
“Lighting Hanukkah candles in that dark place captures the essence of the Jewish spirit: light prevailing over darkness,” the families of the six said in a statement published by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
“Hamas filmed these videos as propaganda, but the humanity of the beautiful six shines through this footage. It is stronger than any terrorist organization,” the statement continued. “These videos bear witness to evil and failure.”
“They were taken alive, they survived in captivity, and they should have come home alive.”
Alongside the video of the Hanukkah candle lighting, the forum released nearly 20 other videos and photographs of the six.
Some of the clips that Hamas decided to dump show 39-year-old Carmel Gat describing her suffering during captivity. Carmel’s captors held flashlights to her face as she was made to record these videos inside a dark tunnel.
This is a video Hamas did not want you to see.
It shows Israeli hostage Carmel Gat enduring the hell of Hamas captivity. You can hear the terror in her voice. Later, Hamas murdered Carmel while she was still in captivity. May her memory be a blessing.@Uvda_tweet pic.twitter.com/q0HCY2X3IO— Oren Marmorstein (@OrenMarmorstein) December 12, 2025
Hamas made these propaganda videos as part of its psychological warfare to sway the Israeli public during the Gaza war — but apparently shelved them, fearing they would backfire. Throughout the war, Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorist groups released videos of hostages pleading for their lives or calling for an end to the military operation. In one of these videos, hostage Evyatar David was made to dig his own grave with a shovel. (Evyatar, fortunately, survived the ordeal, returning home as part of the hostages-for-terrorists deal in October 2025, after 737 days of captivity.)
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Comments
Kill them all. slowly. very slowly.
I wouldn’t care if Gaza was turned into one big parking lot
Being brutal barbarians should have consequences. As should starting wars of aggression and losing.
Murdering innocent civilians in captivity: a war crime? Certainly. One which many Europeans ignore or make excuses for while they accuse Israel of war crimes and genocide. That also includes some of our own elected Congress people as well as commentators. Time for Israel to show the world what a real genocide looks like. The world won’t hate Israel any more because they are maxed out on Israel and Jew hatred. Also time for the Europeans to have some skin in the game so the threat to Israel becomes more than an abstraction. The Israels must know how to do this. If not I can show them.
Time for Islam to vanish off the face of the earth. Let’s start with Dearborn and NYC. Do it now.
There is a reason the term Eurotrash exists. The Euros are trash.
Just to emphasize a point here that language can be a barrier to seeing the forest for the trees.
When we use phrases like “Hamas Terrorists” we diminish the root cause of these actions.
This is islam, bare naked islam. Not fringe or extremist islam, but islam as its prophet commands it to be practiced. It’s the belief system of morally inverted 7th century psychopathic subhuman garbage who prey upon those who are in every way superior to them.
For the entirety of its existence, islam has brought nothing other than darkness, pain and death to the world. It cannot be reformed, nor can it be redeemed.
And as long as we keep kidding ourselves otherwise, people will continue to suffer and die as these poor souls did.
Being brutal barbarians should have consequences. As should starting wars of aggression and losing.
“war crime” does not begin to describe the depravity of the acts committed against these innocent people–they were not combatants captured on the battlefield but innocent people going about their lives–that there should be some sort of trial performed in some courtroom and these actions of hamas somehow weighed and considered and then some “justice” rendered is absurd
if jihad be the intent of hamas / hezbollah /islamofacism and acts like those above be the desired result, then “justice” may be delivered to terrorists like these summarily–at the scene
may these courageous victims rest in honored peace
condolences to their loved ones
I remember when they were found.
They lived their last years in darkness. Just think about that, as a woman , what that would curtail in addition to the horrors of what they all endured.
Don’t worry, European countries are pulling out of Eurovision in support of Hamas. So that’ll help the peace process won’t it 🤬🤬🤬
Here we have real nazis doing real nazi terror and depravity. This should be placed front and center by President Trump. Call out the demonrats for using this vile caricature against Republicans. Show the world what “river to the sea” means to palestinians. Hang it around the neck of all these palestinians from gaza to the plo enclaves.
There is no difference between Hamas and the rest of the Arabs in Gaza. They are either actively a part of Hamas or they support them in any other way they can. Limiting military action to the Arabs pulling the trigger is like declaring war on select Japanese pilots after Pearl Harbor.