The mother of a hostage held by Hamas published on Tuesday a short video filmed in the Gaza Strip after the October 7 attack, in which her son Matan Zangauker is seen squeezed between two terrorists on a motorcycle.
In the clip, which Hebrew media outlets reported was discovered by Israeli forces in Gaza and recently shown to the family, Zangauker is briefly seen being taken down a street as onlookers gleefully ululate.
According to assessments, the video is from Zangauker’s first few days in the Strip and was filmed on the outskirts of the southern Gaza city of Khan Younis.
In an interview, Einav Zangauker said she received other indications her son is alive, including a bottle containing urine that has been determined to be his, and that soldiers operating in Gaza recovered his phone there.
“It’s a very worrying situation,” she told Channel 12, adding that intelligence indicated he’s in “relatively good” health.
She described the release of videos showing the hostages alive in Gaza as “a tool in our fight,” saying she understood concerns their publication could expose intelligence sources “but they are critical for us.”
She also shared text correspondences Matan held with her and with other family members on the morning of October 7, before he and his partner Ilana Gritzewsky were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. Gritzewsky was released during a truce in November.
The messages recount the family’s fear as terrorists were heard entering the kibbutz’s streets, later surrounding the house and entering, with Einav telling her son not to make a sound as he hid in the safe room and held the doorknob.
At one point in the exchange, Matan asked his mother, “But where’s the IDF?” underscoring the shock and disbelief that thousands of Palestinian terrorists were able to storm the border and assault civilian communities and military posts without encountering massive resistance.
His last message to his mother was at 10:08 a.m., saying: “There are people here, they are trying to enter.”
Einav answered: “We sent police, be quiet. Matan? Are you okay?”
He no longer replied.
“Matan was kidnapped alive, I’ve said that from day one, and I demand the State of Israel return him home to me alive,” Einav Zangauker said in the TV interview, stressing that the remains of hostages killed in Israel during the October 7 attack or in Gaza after being abducted must also be repatriated.
She was also asked about Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s remark during a meeting in Washington on Monday that plans for a deal are “ripening.”
“Even a [piece of] ripe fruit on a tree, most of the time because it’s too ripe, falls on the ground and rots,” she continued, calling on the premier to declare “there will be a deal” when he addresses Congress on Wednesday “if the conditions are ripe.”
“We must give hope to the hostages who are hearing us now in the tunnels [under Gaza].”
Zangauker’s publication of the video and her entreaties for a deal came a day after the IDF announced that it had confirmed the deaths of two more hostages, Alex Dancyg and Yagev Buchshtav, in Hamas captivity. Their families criticized the government for not reaching a deal with Hamas earlier in the war, which perhaps could have saved the hostages.
The IDF has now confirmed the deaths of 44 of the remaining 116 hostages held by Hamas since October 7. The terror group kidnapped 251 people during the onslaught, in which some 1,200 were killed, mostly civilians. Hamas is also still holding the bodies of two soldiers since 2014 and two Israeli civilians who entered Gaza in 2014 and 2015.