Israeli mother accuses army of ‘deliberately’ killing her son in Gaza

By Abdelraouf Arnaout

JERUSALEM (AA) – An Israeli mother has accused the army of intentionally killing her son during an operation in the Gaza Strip in November.

Sergeant Ron Sherman,19, was captured by Hamas during a cross-border attack on Oct. 7.

In mid-December, the Israeli army said that it had recovered the body of Sherman from a Hamas tunnel in Jabalia in the northern Gaza Strip, along with the bodies of two others.

Hamas said the three were killed in an Israeli airstrike in the Gaza Strip.

“Ron was deliberately killed by the Israeli army,” his mother told the Israeli public broadcaster KAN.

“The army has been aware of the tunnel where he and two other hostages were held, but they chose to sacrifice them for eliminating a Hamas commander and they used them as a human shield,” she said.

“The three died of suffocation due to the toxins of the bombs that were thrown to eliminate” the Hamas leader, the mother said.

The Israeli army said Hamas commander Ahmed Ghandour was killed in an airstrike in Jabalia in late November.

The Israeli mother said the army had brought back her son’s body to Israel and told her he was killed by Hamas.

''We had no reason to doubt that, but the medical report did not show any signs of suffocation, gunshot wounds, or stabbing.”

Israel has pounded the Gaza Strip since a cross-border attack by Hamas on Oct. 7, which Tel Aviv says killed nearly 1,200 people.

At least 24,448 Palestinians have since been killed, mostly women and children, and 61,504 others injured, according to local health authorities.

According to the UN, around 85% of Gazans have been displaced by the Israeli onslaught, while all of them are food insecure. Hundreds of thousands of people are living without shelter, and ⁠less than half of aid trucks are entering the territory than before the start of the conflict.

*Writing by Mohammad Sio