Piled into a farmer’s cart, covered in blood, three Israeli hostages are filmed by their gleeful Palestinian captors.

This is how 23-year-old Hersh Golderg-Paulin, 26-year-old Elijah Cohen, and 33-year-old Or Levy were brought to the Gaza Strip after they were kidnapped on October 7, the day of Hamas attacks in southern Israel, a video released today shows to the public.

The families of the three young men, desperate for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to strike a deal with Hamas that would include the return of the hostages, approved the release of the video to the media.

All three attended the Nova music festival in southern Israel, one of the targets of the Hamas attack and the site of a massacre of festival-goers, mostly young people. Levi was with his wife who was killed that morning. Cohen’s girlfriend, “buried” under a pile of corpses, survived.

In the video, Golderg-Paulin is carried bloodied into the open cargo area of ​​a pickup truck, having earlier lost part of his left arm.

The shots change abruptly to show the wounded hostages and their cheering captors as the truck speeds along a narrow road under a deep blue sky.

The October 7 attack sparked Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, a war that has raged unabated for nearly nine months, with the Israeli offensive leveling the Palestinian enclave, killing at least 37,000 Palestinians.

Efforts to reach a ceasefire and free the approximately 120 hostages still in captivity have failed.

Hamas released a video of Golderg-Paulin speaking in captivity in April.

His father John Paulin said he first saw this latest video of his abduction a week ago and its release aims to remind the world of those still held hostage in the Gaza Strip, whose lives hang in the balance. a thread.

“What comes to you after 262 days, watching your injured child in a truck being pushed and pulled by the hair and other children suffering, is to grab world leaders by the collar and say – do something to free them the people,” Pollin told Reuters.

“We will continue to channel our power productively and positively, but please do something to free these people.”