An outraged Israeli mom has sparked an uproar after accusing the Israeli army of deliberately gassing her son to death while he was being held in a Gaza tunnel. Now she says the Israeli military had her son’s gravestone removed after her critical message went viral. His killing follows a pattern of Israeli military attacks on Israeli captives in Gaza, raising questions about the existence of a friendly fire policy to prevent prisoner swaps.
Originally Published in The Grayzone by WYATT REED AND MAX BLUMENTHAL
The mother of a now-dead Israeli soldier captured by Hamas militants on October 7 says it was the Israeli military, not Palestinian resistance fighters, who killed her son. In a recently published post on Facebook, Israeli mother Maayan Sherman wrote that her son Ron was “indeed murdered – not by Hamas,” but in circumstances more akin to “Auschwitz and the showers.”
The killing of her son, she wrote, was caused “not from accidental gunfire, nor from crossfire, but from premeditated murder – bombing with poison gas.”
“Ron was kidnapped because of the criminal negligence of all the senior officials of the army and this damned government, who gave an order to eliminate him in order to settle a score with some terrorist from Jabalya,” she added.
Sherman’s body, alongside those of fellow captured soldiers Nik Beizer and Elia Toledano, was recovered from a tunnel in Gaza in December. Mainstream media outlets previously blamed Palestinians for the killing of at least one of the captives, whose death was falsely described in one publication as a “Hamas execution.”
Israel has refused to divulge further information regarding the circumstances of the deaths, stating in a press release that “it cannot be denied nor confirmed that they were killed due to strangulation, suffocation, poisoning, or as the result of an IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] attack or Hamas operation.” But Sherman’s mother says all the evidence indicates the Israeli government deliberately killed her son.
“Oh yes, they also found that he had several crushed fingers, apparently due to his desperate attempts to escape the poison grave that the IDF dug for him when he tried to breathe fresh air, but only breathed IDF poison,” the grieving mother continued.
“My love, may I die in your place, what a nightmare you went through. Death in terrible agony – and all at the behest of the IDF, which you trusted and valued so much, and the [Israeli] cabinet,” Sherman concluded.
Turning her sights on the Israeli regime, Sherman questioned whether the same decision would have been taken “if Bibi’s son was there in the tunnel… or the grandson of [Israeli Defense Minister Yoav] Gallant?” Would they also be “poisoned with gas bombs,” she asked.
Sherman’s unflinching denunciation of top-level Israeli officials represents one of the few isolated instances of Israeli citizens publicly criticizing their government. Following the October 7 raids, the Netanyahu administration imposed a strict crackdown on speech, with those calling for a ceasefire frequently facing lengthy jail sentences for supposedly sympathizing with terrorists.
But Sherman’s condemnation of Israeli army authorities didn’t end there. A gravestone she had installed over her son’s final resting place also bore a pointed inscription: