Hamas’s Release of Hostage Videos Inflames Divisions in Israel

Late on Thursday night in Israel, shortly after thousands of protesters marched with coffins to the military’s headquarters in Tel Aviv demanding a deal for the return of hostages in Gaza, Hamas released a video of one of the captives, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, 23, recorded at some point before he was killed.

It was the fourth such recording released by Hamas in as many days, a piecemeal torment for Israelis that appeared designed to inflame the country’s divisions and increase pressure on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The videos have shown, still living, five of the six hostages whose bodies the Israeli military retrieved from Gaza last weekend — images that starkly underscored what is at stake for the roughly 60 surviving captives if there is no deal.

“This must serve as an immediate wake-up call to the world to take action today,” Mr. Goldberg-Polin’s parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin, said in a statement after the video of their son was released. It was unclear when the footage was taken.

Mr. Netanyahu has remained adamant that he will not agree to terms he believes would allow Hamas to regroup in Gaza, even as protests demanding a deal with Hamas have been held in Israel daily since Sunday, when the military announced the recovery of the bodies of Mr. Goldberg-Polin and five other hostages. The Israeli Ministry of Health said that autopsy reports showed all six had been shot at close range shortly before soldiers found their bodies.

The parents of Mr. Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli American, have been vocal advocates for a cease-fire deal and called urgently for an end to the war in Gaza at the Democratic National Convention in August. Their son also appeared in a video that Hamas released in April.

“No other family should go through what our family (and the families of the other recently executed hostages) have endured,” the couple said in their statement on Thursday.