Israel releases video of hostages in Al-Shifa Hospital as Lebanon border heats up

Israel released videos of hostages inside the Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza on Oct. 7, causing some online commentators to applaud Hamas for appearing to give medical care to the kidnapped, as more information emerges about other hostages and the situation on the country's northern border with Lebanon heats up on Monday. 

Surveillance footage published Sunday by Israel shows a Nepali citizen and a Thai citizen who were kidnapped from Israel being brought into Al-Shifa on Oct. 7, the same day that terrorists from the Gaza Strip entered Israel and killed about 1,200 people, including women, children and the elderly as well as more than 30 U.S. citizens, and took approximately 240 others hostage. 

The video led some to applaud Hamas and condemn Israel, whose troops entered the hospital based on intelligence showing that a main Hamas command center is located there. 

"Sorry, what’s the claim here exactly? That Al-Shifa hospital is a Hamas command and control centre because injured hostages were taken there for medical treatment?" Owen Jones, a columnist for The Guardian, wrote on X, formerly Twitter, in response to a video of the hostages in the hospital. "The presence of injured hostages definitely justifies Israel’s massacre of the hospital. Case closed."

Postcast host Aaron Mate commented on the video: "This appears to show that Palestinian militants took Oct. 7th captives to Shifa for treatment. Unlike Israel, which attacks Palestinians and lets them bleed to death, remain crushed under rubble, and even bombs them again, including in ambulances."

Additionally, more information emerged about 19-year-old Israeli soldier Noa Marciano, whose body was found near the Al-Shifa Hospital last week after Hamas posted a video of her talking about her personal life before flashing to photographs of her body, claiming that she was killed in an Israeli airstrike. 

Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari, an IDF spokesman, said that she was injured during an airstrike that killed her Hamas captor, and an independent pathological report determined that her injuries were not life-threatening. He said intelligence indicates that after she was injured, "Hamas terrorists took Noa into Shifa Hospital, where she was murdered quickly."

Israel has been warning civilians for weeks to evacuate the northern part of the Gaza Strip, and on Monday, the Palestinian Red Crescent Society, the region's form of the Red Cross, said that 28 premature infants were evacuated from Al-Shifa to Egypt to receive medical care. 

The updates on the Gaza Strip come amid reports that Hamas will release some hostages in exchange for a several-day ceasefire. 

Adding tension to the situation, skirmishes at the Lebanese border are rising. Israel said that after a terrorist squad in Lebanon tried to launch anti-tank missiles across the southern border into Israel, the IDF attacked Hezbollah's infrastructure in Lebanon using a fighter jet, a combat helicopter and tank fire.

About 25 launches from Lebanon toward Israel were detected across the border, and several of the launches were intercepted by Israeli air defense systems, while the remaining launches fell into open areas, Israel said.

The tension is not just limited to the areas surrounding Gaza and Lebanon. Israeli police arrested 45-year-old freelance journalist Marwat Al-Azza, who lives in East Jerusalem and was working for NBC, for allegedly inciting terrorism and identifying with a terrorist organization after she reportedly made multiple posts on her Facebook page regarding the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack, according to The Jerusalem Post. 

"The investigation of Ms. Azza is unrelated to NBC News. It is based on her personal Facebook posts that predate her time with us as a freelancer," an NBC News spokesperson told Just the News. "We were not aware of those posts before we engaged Ms. Azza four weeks ago. She will not be contributing to our coverage going forward."

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