Hamas’s practice of holding bodies of hostages whom it killed is the “lowest form of terrorist, psychological warfare,” Ruby Chen, the father of Israeli-American hostage Itay Chen, 19 at the time he was kidnapped, told the U.N. Security Council.
The Thursday session, called at Washington’s request, focused on Resolution 2474, which addresses the return of the bodies of missing people held by hostile parties during armed conflict. It was the first such discussion since Oct. 7.
“I humbly ask the Security Council members, what kind of human being holds people for a decade and uses them as negotiation chips?” Chen told the council.
“Who denies the deceased the last basic human dignity they deserve?” he added.
Chen told the council that the Israel Defense Forces notified him in March 2024 that his son was declared dead, but the terror group has refused to confirm its possession of Itay’s remains or to provide any physical evidence for more than 19 months.
“What my family have been subjected to—this deliberate withholding of information about our sons fate and the refusal to return him, has been a form of slow and enduring psychological torture,” he told the council.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, urged the Security Council to enforce Resolution 2474 and ensure the return of the deceased hostages.
“Hamas has turned the bodies of the murdered into an industry of death,” he said. “It uses them to negotiate, to bargain, to profit.”
“This is not a mistake, it is a strategy,” he said.
Danon called on the global body to appoint a special U.N. envoy to address the issue of returning the bodies of the kidnapped.
“The obligation to return the fallen is an ancient human conscience—not a political gift, not a Western norm, but a universal obligation,” he said. “In Judaism, Christianity and Islam, burying the dead is a sacred commandment.”
