Terrorist with white flag tries posing as a hostage

The IDF suspects he might have been a decoy to lure soldiers into a trap.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

During an IDF operation this week in Gaza, soldiers saw a man signaling them with a white flag and calling for help, Channel 12 reported Tuesday.

This raised the suspicion that he was an Israeli hostage who had escaped captivity.

As a result, a large number of forces were sent to the scene, the army said in a vaguely worded statement.

“During IDF forces’ activity in the Gaza Strip last night, a sign was identified that raised suspicions that there may be captives and missing persons in the area,” an IDF spokesman said.

“In light of the suspicion, extensive searches were carried out using various means. After no further findings were found, it emerged that these were not hostages but were most likely the enemy.”

The report theorized that the terrorist was trying to lure IDF forces into an area where explosives or other traps had been laid.

No troops were hurt in the course of the searches.

In December 2023, two months after the war began, when well over a hundred hostages were still being held in Gaza, three Israelis had managed to escape in Shejaiya after their captors were killed in an IDF strike.

When Yotam Haim, Samar Talalka and Alon Shamriz saw IDF troops, they came out of their hiding place shirtless, with their hands up and holding a white flag.

The soldiers, who were on high alert in an active battle zone, saw the figures as threats and shot and killed two of them.

The third person fled, and the commanders gave orders to hold fire in order to identify him.

After about 15 minutes, the battalion commander heard shouts in Hebrew of “Help” and “They’re shooting at me,” and gave additional orders to hold fire, calling out in Hebrew “Come toward us.”

When the figure emerged from a building and started approaching the forces, two soldiers who had not heard the order shot and killed him.

In an interview with Makor Rishon shortly after the IDF investigation into the incident was completed, Col. (res.) Boaz Amidror, who wrote a book on the dangers of friendly fire in the IDF, noted that the army had suffered in Gaza from such deceptions.

“There were cases of people shouting ‘Save us,’ waving a white flag, and in retrospect they were revealed to be terrorists who shot at our forces,” he said.

Lessons drawn from the tragedy included taking extraordinary care in places where it was even suspected that hostages might be hidden.

Channel 12 reported Sunday that the IDF is not entering areas in Gaza City where its intelligence believes that hostages are being held.

There are representatives of the Prisoners and Missing Persons Directorate embedded with all the forces in the field, the report said, so that troops on the move can be warned in real time if they are entering such an area “and the activity there is very different.”