An elderly Israeli woman who was released by Hamas terrorists on Monday provided the first public account of what conditions are like under the terror group’s custody and described the horror of being kidnapped and dragged back to Gaza during the October 7 attack.
Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, was taken captive on a motorbike, beaten with sticks, and taken to a network of tunnels that resembled a “spiderweb” in layout, she said Tuesday at a press briefing in Tel Aviv, Israel. Lifshitz was one of two Israeli hostages released Monday, alongside Nurit Cooper, 79. Hamas previously freed two Americans on Friday.
“I went through hell,” Lifshitz said. “We never thought and never knew that we could reach a situation like this.” However, she added that captives received medical care and were treated well by Hamas after the surprise invasion.
While Hamas butchered more than 1,400 Israelis in the surprise attack, Lifshitz said they treated her and her companions well once they were in the group’s custody. Hamas is widely believed to be using the hostages as a shield to delay or possibly even prevent an IDF ground invasion into the Gaza strip. They are also certainly conscious of the propaganda value of releasing hostages who have been treated humanely.
“They really took care of the sanitary side of things so that we didn’t get sick,” said the former hostage, who slept on a mattress under Hamas’s custody.
Lifshitz was held with 25 other captives in Gaza before being separated with four other people from her kibbutz. She recounted how each person in the smaller group received their own doctor while a paramedic was present to supervise the administering of medication.
“They were very generous to us, very kind. They kept us clean,” Lifshitz said. “They took care of every detail. There are a lot of women and they know about feminine hygiene and they took care of everything there.”
It’s unclear whether the hostages who were not held in immediate proximity to Lifshitz were treated with the same humanity.
Lifshitz’s husband remains in captivity.
The freed captive also accused the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet intelligence service of failing to take the threat from Hamas “seriously,” saying their inaction and “lack of awareness … hurt us a lot” on October 7. More than 220 hostages were taken that day.
Daniel Lifshitz, the grandson of Yocheved, told NBC’s Today about how glad he was to be reunited with his grandmother and what the world needs to do to bring back the rest of the hostages.
“The world pressure has to continue,” he said Tuesday. “We need to speed up everything to bring all those people back. This is a very scary moment for me. I was really happy to see my grandmother. It was amazing, but seeing her was making me very scared for the rest of the people staying there.”
“My grandmother is a very, very, very strong woman,” he continued. “I don’t know anyone stronger than her, and to see her in this fragile situation, mental situation, from one side I was so happy to see her and so happy that she can walk, but I saw her, and also I felt such a huge, huge, huge sting in my heart to see her in that situation knowing that she’s been through so much.”