An Unprecedented Medical Committee Determines When A Hostage Held in Gaza is Dead

This is one bizarre narrative. This committee is deeming hostages dead in a way that reads as completely unaccountable and requiring no remains.

Reading about this unprecedented medical committee and their determinations gave me second thoughts on why the IDF may have shot those 3 hostages without question?

Israel Admits to Killing 3 Hostages- While rescuing none

Is it possible these hostages and many others have already been deemed by committee to be dead? Imagine the inconvenience of having those deemed dead turn up alive?

You read this article and tell me what you think of Israel’s practice here. Do take note of the fact there is really no way of knowing how these conclusions are drawn. Where’s the accountability?

Times of Israel

A week into the war, the Health Ministry appointed the head of its general medicine division Dr. Hagar Mizrahi, head of the National Center of Forensic Medicine Dr. Chen Kugel, and Shaare Zedek Medical Center’s director general Prof. Ofer Merin to this initially secretive group.

Since mid-October, the three have met for hours several times each week to painstakingly review information provided to them by the defense and intelligence communities regarding suspected deaths of particular hostages.

The doctors draw conclusions only when they have deliberated over and cross-referenced sufficient data to be able to medically and unanimously determine with absolute certainty that a captive is dead.

When the committee makes its decision, it prepares a detailed report explaining how it reached its findings and gives it to the IDF Rabbinate in the case of a captive soldier. If the dead hostage was a civilian, the IDF Rabbinate and Israel’s Chief Rabbinate must sign off on it.

“We give the rabbis the protocol, which explains how we reached the determination of death, but it does not include the actual intelligence material we referred to,” Merin said.

The final step is for the IDF to notify the family, who decides when to notify the public through the media. Families, consulting with rabbinic authorities if they choose, also decide how they want to handle the burial and mourning process without a body present.

The Times of Israel sat down with Merin at his office at Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem to ask him how it is to take on this incredibly difficult task, and how doctors sitting in central Israel can know for sure that a hostage in Gaza — whom they have not seen or touched in person — is no longer alive.

Were there any models for methodologies for determining the death of a person for whom you have visual and intelligence information, but no tissue or DNA evidence?

“No, there were no models out there.“

Okay, so you can rely on evidence from within Israel from October 7. But where is the additional information from and how can it be characterized?

It’s from outside Israel. That’s all I can say.

So how is Israel getting good quality material that you as doctors can work with and make decisions you are 100% sure of?

Again, I can’t give you details, but I can promise you that we don’t have camera people sitting and filming at the opening of tunnels where hostages are being held. It would be a different story [in terms of the hostages’ situation] if we did. So we’re exposed to other information.

Deemed dead by committee. A detailed report created, a story written, backed up by nothing, but one big appeal to authority. And a belief in that authority. Be it the IDF or this committee. I find this to be very strange.

As always share some thoughts!