Recordings of October 7 IDF victims released to families
After the IDF gave audio clips to the family of Sergeant Shay Ashram, who fell in Nahal Oz, the family slammed the release for having no value for being incomplete • DM Katz ordered full disclosure
The family of the IDF observer Sergeant Shay Ashram, who was killed on October 7, 2023, released on Tuesday audio recordings taken on the day of her death that they received from the army.
Defense Minister Israel Katz ordered the IDF to release the full radio recordings after the military was slammed by families for withholding parts. The only exceptions are segments that the Defense Ministry is unable to release due to clear security limitations.
The recordings of Ashram go back to 24 hours before she was killed. She is heard on the morning of October 6, but the family claims that the tapes end at 4:00 am the next day, and are useless because there is nothing new in them. Before she was murdered in the Nahal Oz base, Ashram managed to call her family at 7:45 am and say goodbye while she was crying and panicking.
After a legal battle that lasted for months, the bereaved families from Nahal Oz received communication tapes from the hours before the massacre. Parts of the recordings that day were heard and reported in the media, but the families hoped to uncover additional details about what happened during the horrific hours their daughters experienced.
As the military transferred only partial recordings, the families have appealed to the High Court to receive the full material. With added pressure over the military investigation and the establishment of a state investigation committee, they seek to understand the truth about what happened on the base, on their own.
Dror Ashram, the father of Shay, spoke to i24NEWS on the Central Edition program, calling the lack of material "simply neglect." He said that the IDF should at least "perform an investigation as necessary and we'll know the truth - and not just rumors and reports. The Chief of Staff has been holding an investigation of Nahal Oz for half a year already and we have yet to be called, but everything has already been leaked."
He said a national commission of inquiry must be established.
The IDF said that, "following further investigation, it was found that between 4:48 am and the outbreak of the attack, no sound recordings of observations were heard and therefore recordings of these hours were not initially transmitted. The IDF shares the families' grief and will continue to accompany them."