The family of hostage Omri Miran said Wednesday that it was a “disgrace” that he is still being held in a tunnel on the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, after Hamas published a propaganda video showing the hostage.
The family approved the release of a still image, but asked that the full video, in which the hostage is seen walking through a tunnel in Gaza and lighting a candle to mark his birthday, not be published.
Miran, who was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, marked his 48th birthday on April 11, his second in captivity.
“On the eve of Holocaust Remembrance Day, on which it’s customary to say ‘never again,’ there is an Israeli citizen crying out for help in a Hamas tunnel. This is a disgrace for the State of Israel,” Miran’s family said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum.
“Our Omri is strong and will not break, but his heart is broken. A year and a half and 58 hostages are waiting to be brought back,” the statement said. “We will continue to fight until Omri returns to us, and especially to his two daughters who are waiting with all their hearts to hold him again.”
Miran previously appeared in a Hamas propaganda video last April. Following the release of other hostages during the most recent ceasefire, Miran’s family reported receiving confirmation that he is alive from other hostages who were held alongside him up until last July.
Democrats party chairman Yair Golan wrote on X Wednesday that the footage of Miran “screams what the government tries to hide: It is impossible to continue like this.”
“His girls need their father at home, not in Hamas videos. It is our duty to fight with determination to bring all the hostages home immediately,” Golan said.
Hamas has previously issued several similar videos of hostages being held, in what Israel says is deplorable psychological warfare. Most Israeli media, including The Times of Israel, do not usually carry the video clips unless the families of those shown in them permit the media to distribute them.
Miran was taken captive by Hamas terrorists from Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the onslaught, when terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251 others.
He is among the 59 hostages still being held by terror groups in the Gaza Strip, including 58 of the 251 abducted on October 7. They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 30 hostages and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The body of another soldier killed in 2014 is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the 59 hostages.