The mother of one of the three Israeli hostages mistakenly shot by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) troops has forgiven the soldiers who killed her son, saying that they were doing their best and that they should continue fighting to destroy Hamas.
Iris Haim, the mother of Yotam Haim, 28, spoke to Israel’s Channel 12, and delivered a message to the entire brigade that had been fighting in the area of Shejaiya, in the northern Gaza Strip, when her son and two other hostages were mistakenly shot as they called for help.
As Breitbart News reported, Yotam Haim, Alon Shamriz, 26, and Samar Fouad Talalka, 24, were killed after emerging in the open on the battlefield, shirtless and waving a white flag. Their deaths caused widespread anguish in Israel.
Iris Haim, however, said:
Hello to the Bislach Brigade, battalion 17, this is Iris Haim, I’m Yotam’s mother.
I wanted to tell you that I love you very much and I embrace you from afar. I know that everything that happened is completely not your fault, it’s nobody’s fault – except the Hamas, may their name and memory be wiped off the face of the earth.
I ask you to stay safe and always keep in your thoughts that what you’re doing is the best possible thing in the world to help us, as the Jewish people, and we all need you to be safe and sound. Don’t hesitate for a single moment – if you see a terrorist, don’t think that you have deliberately killed a hostage, you need to protect yourselves because that’s the only way you would be able to protect us.
We invite you to come visit us at the earliest opportunity, whoever is willing, we want to see you with our own eyes and embrace you and tell you that what you have done – as painful as it is to say, and as sad as it is – was likely the right thing to do at that moment, and none of us are judging you or angry with you. Not me, not my husband Raviv, not my daughter Noya, not Yotam, of blessed memory, and not Tuval, Yotam’s brother.
We love you very much, and that’s that.
Subsequent investigations of the hostages’ deaths revealed that the soldiers in the field had not been briefed about banners that the hostages had hung outside a building calling for help; that a sniper who shot the hostages did not recognize their white flag; and that an IDF dog that had been sent into the lair of Hamas terrorists who were holding the hostages had recorded audio of the hostages calling for help, but the recording had not been reviewed until days after the hostages were killed.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
Full disclosure: the author is distantly related via marriage to Yotam Haim.
