After the ceasefire in Gaza and the exchange of hostages between Israel and Hamas, social media users, particularly on X, have been widely sharing posts featuring a photo of the 20 Israeli hostages recently released from Gaza, pointing out that all of them are male.
This wave of posts and claims was initiated by an account called @realMaalouf whose post garnered over seven million views and 22,000 quotes. The account has become well known for sharing propaganda and misleading or false content.
The claim was later amplified by several Israeli-American accounts, where it also gained millions of views.
Some users captioned the photo with statements such as, “No female hostage is still alive. Think about that for a moment.”
While others directly claimed that all the female hostages had been slaughtered or raped, adding that “Hamas killed every single female hostage they had left, so those girls couldn’t tell the world what they had done to them.”
Overall, the claims circulating online reached at least 20 million engagements on X alone.
Female Hostages Were Released in Earlier Deals
Misbar investigated the viral claim and found that the gender composition of the latest release reflects the sequencing of prior ceasefire agreements, not acts of sexual violence or killing.
According to CNN’s hostages tracker, at least 73 of the 251 hostages taken by Hamas on October 7, 2023, were female.
Two of them, an American mother and daughter, were released on 20 October 2023, for medical reasons.
Three days later, on October 23rd, two elderly hostages were released following negotiations, while another was rescued by the IOF on October 31.
At her release, 85-year-old Israeli hostage Yocheved Lifshitz was seen shaking hands in farewell with a Hamas member. She later stated in interviews that her captors were friendly and gentle, and that they shared their food with the hostages.
Later, on 22 November 2023, Hamas and Israel agreed to a temporary four-day ceasefire, which included the exchange of approximately 50 hostages for 150 Palestinian prisoners.
The ceasefire was extended, and around 60 female hostages were released out of roughly 100 hostages, who were exclusively women, children, and foreign nationals, between 24 and 30 November.
Nine other female hostages were released in January 2025, three on the 19th and four on the 25th.
In February 2025, Hamas returned the body of one female hostage as part of a deal, and in total, ten female hostage bodies were recovered by the IOF.
By June 2025, two more female hostages were rescued by the IOF.
Only one female hostage, Inbar Hayman, was reportedly dead in captivity. While some Israeli platforms claimed that she was killed by her captors, Hamas clarified on November 23, 2024 that Inbar Hayman was killed in an area under Israeli attacks in the northern Gaza Strip.
Her body was returned by Hamas on 15 October 2025 as part of the ceasefire agreement, marking the release of the last female hostage’s remains.
And in a development that raises doubts, after the body was recovered, forensic investigations claimed that Hayman was killed on October 7, 2023, and her remains were taken into the Gaza Strip.
Therefore, claims that all female hostages were killed or raped by Hamas are false.
Israeli Media Misrepresentation of Female Hostages in Gaza
Israeli media outlets and pro-Israel social media accounts often circulate rumors about the treatment of Israeli female hostages during their captivity in Gaza, attempting to portray Palestinians—and Hamas members in particular—as barbaric, disrespectful toward women, and prone to sexual assault or other forms of abuse.
These outlets frequently conflate the harsh conditions of captivity with the difficult living conditions in Gaza, exaggerating the suffering of women in detention.
One example is former Israeli prisoner Noa Argamani, who criticized the Israeli media for taking her statements out of context and denied claims that she was beaten by members of the Al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas’s military wing.
Misbar’s investigative team found that Israeli media misrepresented Argamani’s frustration over the manipulation of her story for propaganda purposes. Renowned outlets such as The Jerusalem Post, The Times of Israel, and Israel National News not only failed to report this misrepresentation accurately but also did not correct the inaccuracies in their published articles, according to Misbar’s blog.
Western media outlets likewise failed to report Argamani’s true account of her injuries, which were caused by Israeli airstrikes rather than any mistreatment by the Palestinian resistance. This lack of coverage further obscured the reality of her experience.
Hamas Releases 20 Male Hostages Alive in Exchange for About 4,000 Palestinians
On October 13, 2025, Hamas released 20 Israeli male hostages as part of the first phase of a ceasefire agreement with Israel, under a plan mediated by the U.S. President Donald Trump.
In exchange, Israel released approximately 2,000 Palestinians, including 250 serving life sentences and 1,700 who had been abducted from Gaza during the war and held without charge.
On the same day, Hamas also released the bodies of four male hostages, one of which was an Israeli soldier killed in action during an ambush in Khan Younis.
Two days later, on 14 October, Hamas released the bodies of two hostages and stated that, with this, it had handed over all the bodies of the hostages it was able to reach, thereby fulfilling its obligations under the ceasefire agreement.
Hamas added that recovering the remains of the remaining hostages would require advanced equipment and methods to remove debris.
Israel Accusing Hamas of Violating the Ceasefire
On the other hand, Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar told his Italian counterpart: “Israel knows full well that Hamas is capable of returning additional bodies and is choosing not to do so.”
Israel had previously announced that it would not reopen the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt and would reduce the flow of aid into Gaza, accusing Hamas of violating the ceasefire over the bodies crisis.
However, according to The Times of Israel, two senior Trump administration officials held a phone briefing with reporters on 15 October, arguing that Hamas had not violated the ceasefire agreement and was indeed unable to reach any more of the bodies.
The ceasefire agreement appears to acknowledge that Hamas and other Palestinian factions may not be able to locate all the remains within the given timeframe.
A second White House adviser added that it would have been “almost impossible for Hamas, even if they knew where all 28 bodies were, to mobilize and retrieve them all.”
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