Shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, friends and family of Gali Shlezinger Idan, who lived in a kibbutz near the Gaza border, received frantic messages to check his Facebook page.
What they found surprised them. Hamas members were using Ms. Idan’s Facebook account to livestream how they were holding her and her family hostage. During the 43-minute broadcast, gunmen forced Idan and her family to crouch on a tile floor while missiles and gunfire attacked her building.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said Keren de Via, a friend of the Idan family who watched Ms. Idan’s children hug their parents and cry during the live broadcast. “How could we see them terrorize the family like this? How could I see this on Facebook?
In a new war tactic, Hamas has taken over the social media accounts of kidnapped Israelis and used them to spread violent messages and wage psychological warfare, according to interviews with 13 Israeli families and their friends, as well as online experts. social workers who have studied extremist groups. .
In at least four cases, Hamas members logged into their hostages’ personal social media accounts to livestream the October 7 attacks. In the days that followed, Hamas also appeared to infiltrate its hostages’ Facebook groups, Instagram accounts and WhatsApp chats to issue death threats and calls for violence. Hamas members also took hostages’ cellphones to make calls and taunt friends and family, according to Israeli families and their friends.
Extremist groups have long turned to social media to promote their causes by livestreaming attacks and posting propaganda. But the hijacking of the Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp accounts of individual hostages “weaponizes social media in a way that I don’t think we’ve seen before,” said Thomas Rid, a professor of strategic studies at Johns Hopkins University. “We are not psychologically prepared for this.”
The tactic is particularly heartbreaking for those close to the account owners, exacerbating an already distressing situation.
Social media has become a lifeline for friends and family searching for clues about missing loved ones, and receiving a message or seeing a video posted to the accounts immediately inspired a moment of hope, said two of the families whose relatives were taken as hostages by Hamas. But that backfired when they saw that someone else had made the posts.
“Maybe I felt hopeful for a second, and then confused,” de Via said. “Then just terror.”
Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, declined to comment on the seizure of the kidnapped Israelis’ social media accounts, but said it had established a “special operations center staffed with experts, including fluent Hebrew and Arabic speakers.” , to closely monitor and respond to this rapidly evolving situation.”
Two members of the security team that oversees Facebook, who declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak publicly, confirmed that Hamas had gained access to the Facebook accounts of Israelis who were taken hostage to start live broadcasts and post to their accounts. . This appeared to be part of Hamas’ strategy from the moment the attacks occurred, they said. The accounts have since been made private and the live streams have been deleted, they added.
Hamas representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Ms. Idan’s Facebook account was confiscated on October 7, about two hours after Hamas attacked her kibbutz, Nahal Oz, where she lived with her husband and four children. Suddenly, a live stream appeared on her Facebook page, Ms. De Via and a family relative said.
Ms. de Via, who was once Ms. Idan’s neighbor and has children the same age, said she had been trying to contact her when the live video appeared.
“I opened it up immediately because she’s not someone who makes Facebook videos or does live streams,” de Via said. “The first thing I saw was how terrified the children looked, and then voices in Arabic. I understood that something very bad was happening.”
A recording of the livestream shows Idan, 50, and her husband, Tzachi, 51, crouched on the ground with their two youngest children, a girl and a boy. The boy, 7 years old, cried and asked: “Where is my sister?”
“Then I realized that his two older sisters weren’t there,” de Via said. “And then I saw the blood on Tzachi’s hands and I thought the worst.”
Medical staff later found the body of Ms. Idan’s eldest daughter, Mayan, who had just turned 18. She had been shot. The couple’s third daughter, Sharon, was not home, de Via said. Finally, Mrs. Idan and her children stayed at home; Her husband was taken hostage.
Hamas also took control of the Facebook account of Dikla Arava, 50, another Nahal Oz resident. The attackers used the account to start a live broadcast. During the 20-minute broadcast, Ms. Arava’s teenage son was forced to come out and tell his neighbors that he was safe and that they should come out.
Two of Ms. Arava’s relatives, who saw the video and shared the footage with The New York Times, said it was horrifying that armed men had used the teenager to try to lure other people. Mrs. Arava, her partner and her three children were kidnapped by Hamas. Last week, a video was posted on a Hamas-affiliated Telegram channel showing one of Arava’s teenage daughters in Gaza.
A live video also began on October 7 on the personal Facebook account of Bracha Levinson, a resident of Kibbutz Nir Oz near Gaza. She was seen motionless on the ground in a pool of blood, surrounded by men with guns, said Galya Shishitzky, who grew up with the Levinson family. Ms. Levinson’s home was subsequently burned to the ground.
“We didn’t understand what was going on,” Shishitzky said of the chaos. He couldn’t understand how the Hamas members were in Ms. Levinson’s home, “a second mother to me,” and he didn’t click on the Facebook live stream because he was in shock.
“How could this happen?” she said.
Shir Matan, a Tel Aviv student whose 27-year-old cousin disappeared after attending the Tribe of Nova music festival, which was attacked by Hamas, said several strange posts had appeared on her cousin’s Instagram page five hours after the raid.
“There were voices in Arabic and just shuffling feet,” said Matan, 31. “Then someone said, in Arabic, ‘Whore.'” The video was deleted after 10 minutes and nothing has been posted to the account since, she said. She refused to reveal the name of her cousin for fear of being harassed.
Two Israeli families said they had also seen posts with a single Arabic word, death, on the Facebook pages of their missing loved ones before they were deleted. Hamas also used the phones of kidnapped and dead Israelis to upload photos and videos after the attack, relatives who received them said.
Many Israelis have continued to ask for information on social media, seeing it as the only way to give the hostages a voice and hope to their families.
Lian Gold, a Tel Aviv DJ who knew many people working at and attending the Nova festival near the Gaza border, created an Instagram page and Telegram channel called We are OneIsrael to share images and contact information of the missing.
“I get messages asking me, ‘Please help me, please, please, please,’” Ms. Gold said. “So what can I do? I just post it and hope I find something.”
Lisa Lerer contributed with reports.
