Shortly after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, friends and relatives of Gali Shlezinger Idan, who lived in a kibbutz near the Gaza border, received frantic messages to check her Facebook page.
What they found shocked them. Hamas members were using Ms. Idan’s Facebook account to livestream themselves holding her and her family hostage. During the 43-minute broadcast, gunmen forced Ms. Idan and her family to crouch on a tile floor as missiles and gunfire blasted their building.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing,” said Keren de Via, a friend of the Idan family who watched Ms. Idan’s children hug their parents and cry during the livestream. “How could we watch them terrorize the family like this? How could I watch this on Facebook?”
