Yotam Haim, 28, was kidnapped from his home in Kfar Aza on October 7, and was killed last month when he was accidentally shot by IDF soldiers in the Shijaiyah neighborhood of Gaza City, along with the hostages Alon Shamriz and Samer Talalka. On Sunday night, News 13 published a video that showed Haim's kidnapping.
Video shows the moment of Yotam Haim'skidnapping from Kfar Aza
(Courtesy of News 13)
"I see Yotam without a shirt. What I see here is that they bring him, they hold him, and what encouraged me is that I see that they are not pushing him," said Iris Haim, Yotam's mother, while watching the video.
In the video, the young man is seen being led, shirtless through the kibbutz fields by armed terrorists, and forcibly put into a vehicle. On the morning of the attack, Haim had time to tell his mother Iris on the phone: "Mom, I'm going to burn."
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He was the drummer of the band Persephore, and on the evening of October 7 he was supposed to participate in a metal festival in Tel Aviv. When the attack began that morning, and before its scope became clear, he wrote to his family on WhatsApp: "We won't make it to our concert in Tel Aviv because of the Hamasniks."
He even uploaded a photo to Instagram of himself drumming in the protected room and wrote: "The terrorists outside and me." He later informed his family that he heard gunshots and sent them a recording of a friend running outside shouting: "There are terrorists in the kibbutz." At 10:40 a.m. he still had time to say that they entered his home and that he hears them turning his house over.
The findings of the investigation into the tragedy that happened in Shijaiyah a little over a month ago, published at the end of December, revealed that 38 meters and two buildings with an open angle separated the sniper from the 17th Battalion and the three hostages walking in the adjacent street. The sniper spotted them while watching from the house where the force was staying at 9:42 a.m., on a sunny Friday morning with good visibility. At the same time, it became clear in the investigation that between the sniper with the Trijicon sight that magnifies 4 times what the eye sees and the three hostages was a tall tree whose branches and top slightly blocked the sniper's line of sight.
The three passed through an area that was designated "red" for the soldiers who secured the house, and where there was also a battalion commander, Lt. Col. L, but one of them managed to slip aside, probably toward a nearby building. At this point the sniper shouted "terrorists" and the battalion commander stopped him, but he did not leave the building to attack as the IDF initially estimated.
The battalion commander did prepare for further action, while two other soldiers in the building, with regular weapons and a Negev machine gun, identified the third hostage from their window. That's when they fired a fatal shot at him that caused his death even though he shouted in Hebrew, including his name.
The army estimates that the two other hostages did not hear the shouts of "stop" by the commander, nor the shouts in Hebrew of the third hostage. Only when the force went out to scan the area and recognized him as having a western appearance did the force decide to check the identity of the bodies.