Sergeant Ron Sherman, Corporal Nik Beizer, and Elia Toledano, who were kidnapped to the Gaza Strip on October 7 and whose bodies were extracted by the IDF and returned to Israel in December, suffocated to death as a result of a gas leak in the tunnel where they were held as a result of an IDF attack.
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Dead hostages: Elia Toledano, Sergeant Ron Sherman, and Corporal Nik Beizer
(Photo: Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
Their families have known the cause of death for some time, but were shocked to discover that Chief of Staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi just signed the investigation as final on Monday. The grieving families of the dead hostages found out about this from the media.
"On November 1, we received a flyer from Hamas with a picture of Ron warning that the IDF bombardments will kill him," said Dr. Maayan Sherman, his mother. "On November 12, the IDF already started asking me about his tattoos, if he has scars or birthmarks, and they asked for DNA. Supposedly I didn't know he was already killed, but I did. I knew from their body language, my sister felt it too. On December 15, it was announced that he had been murdered in captivity. When you are told that your son was murdered in captivity, you imagine the worst. They asked if I wanted an autopsy done on him and I said no, I don't want to know what they did to him, if they tortured him. Fortunately for us, Nik's family requested an autopsy, and they were all examined externally."
The families received the results two weeks later, and the toxicology tests months later. "At the shiva I was still living with the thoughts of how Ron was murdered. If they shot him, did they cut off his limbs? These are the things that ran through my mind. Ilana Dayan (investigative TV show host) visited us at the shiva and whispered a sentence to me that I didn't understand what it meant at that moment, she said I should find out about Ghandour."
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Hamas warns in Hebrew and Arabic that Israel must stop targeting officials because then the hostgaes would die
Ahmed Ghandour, Hamas' northern division commander and the head of terror organization's rocket array, was killed in a military bombing at the beginning of November, a few days after Hamas sent warnings about the presence of hostages near his senior officials.
"Two weeks after the shiva we received the pathology report," Sherman continued. "I received an unprompted message, that there was no sign of violence on the body, no shooting, nothing. Only the hardships of a month in captivity. I remembered what Ilana told me and thought about how they repeated to us that he was murdered in captivity, and also in the warnings I received. I checked the dates and saw that they came to ask about the tattoos the very day after Ghandour was killed. I went and asked Nitzan Alon (part of the POW and hostages team) directly, and he replied that they were apparently killed in an IDF bombing, and that he apologizes."
"The reason Alon added 'apparently' is because the IDF tested another and final possibility with toxicology tests to make sure that Hamas did not kill the hostages by injecting poison," Sherman explained.
On Monday, the families found out from the media that the investigation by the IDF has been completed, and the Chief of Staff signed it off. Ron, Nik and Elia suffocated to death due to a gas leak which followed an IDF attack. "It doesn't change anything, except for more frustration and anguish and the feeling we're at war against the IDF," she explained. "I can't understand why they waited until now. Why did they have to keep fighting for the Chief of Staff's signature? Maybe because they know this is more proof of the dissonance between returning the hostages and the destruction of Hamas. The circumstances of Ron's death leave no room for doubt.
"The torture we face as a family does not make sense," Sherman added. "And we are not experiencing it from Hamas, Hamas did its part on October 7. Since then it has been the Israeli government and the defense establishment."
The IDF spokesperson said that the IDF will complete the investigation into the circumstances of the deaths of the hostages Sergeant Ron Sherman, Corporal Nik Beizer, and Elia Toledano in the next few days and it will be presented to the families. He added that the IDF "grieves with the bereaved families and shares the pain as they continue to accompany them."
Aside from Ron, Nik and Elia, the IDF extracted the bodies of Eden Zecharya and Warrant Officer Ziv Dado from the same network of tunnels. According to the IDF, the destroyed network of tunnels consisted of two levels. The first was about 10 meters deep, and the second descended dozens of meters deep. The network of tunnels included many branches and was used to manage Hamas' fighting capabilities and for the passage of terrorists. The IDF found weapons, infrastructure for the production of weapons and emergency living quarters with toilets, air conditioning, and even a water cooler.