WASHINGTON – The family of Abigail Mor Idan — the 4-year-old who was the first American hostage released by Hamas in its cease-fire deal with Israel – gave heartbreaking new details of her capture to help push for the release of the Iran-backed terror group’s remaining hostages.
Just weeks before her fourth birthday, Abigail crawled out from under her father’s massacred body outside their southern Israel home on Oct. 7 to discover she was alone after Hamas left her an orphan, her great-aunt Liz Hirsh Naftali told the House Foreign Affairs Committee Wednesday.
Minutes earlier, Hamas gunmen shot her mother to death inside their house.
Her father tried to flee with the little girl and two of his other children before the terrorists “gunned him down,” Naftali said.
In his final act of paternal devotion, “he fell on Abigail, covering her” while her 10-year-old brother Michael and 6-year-old sister Amalia ran away, Naftali said.
Believing their baby sister was dead, they locked themselves inside a dark closet in their home, clinging to each other in fear and agony.
“Their grandmother … was in Bulgaria on a trip with the kibbutz. She called her grandchildren – a 6- and a 10-year-old in the closet – and she said, ‘Why is it dark?'” Naftali recalled. “She knew it was daytime, and it was a beautiful day. And they said, ‘Because there are Hamas terrorists here and they have just killed our parents and Abigail.'”
“She made them go out of the closet to show her from thousands of miles away the body of her daughter killed them,” she added.
But little Abigail had miraculously survived — though her family would not learn so for three more days “because there was no opportunity for us to understand,” Naftali said.
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Covered in her father’s blood, Abigail had left his slain body and toddled to a schoolmate’s house nearby for help, Naftali said.
There, her young friend’s mother took her in, locking Abigail in a safe room she and her own children took shelter in after Hamas shot their father, too.
But Hamas was not done with its reign of terror on the child.
Its militants kidnapped Abigail with the neighboring family shortly after, holding them hostage in Gaza until her Sunday release.
“What we learned a few days later, was that the witness had seen a mother and children being taken from the kibbutz by Hamas terrorists,” Naftali said.
“That is 50 days we did not know anything about Abigail’s whereabouts. We did not know anything about this mother, Hagar, and her three children. We didn’t know they were together.”
The family would not have their questions answered until Sunday, when Abigail and her neighbors were among 17 hostages set free in the cease-fire agreement that also forced Israel to release 180 Palestinian prisoners.
Calling Abigail “my strength and my hope,” Naftali learned she had been kept in the dark without access to light or much food during her captivity — but her friend’s mother mercifully kept the little girl alive.
2005: Israel unilaterally withdraws from the Gaza Strip more than three decades after winning the territory from Egypt in the Six-Day War.
2006: Terrorist group Hamas wins a Palestinian legislative election.
2007: Hamas seizes control of Gaza in a civil war.
2008: Israel launches military offensive against Gaza after Palestinian terrorists fired rockets into the town of Sderot.
2023: Hamas launches the biggest attack on Israel in 50 years, in an early-morning ambush Oct. 7, firing thousands of rockets and sending dozens of militants into Israeli towns.
Terrorists killed more than 1,200 Israelis, wounded more than 4,200, and took at least 200 hostage.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to announce, “We are at war,” and vowed Hamas would pay “a price it has never known.”
The Gaza Health Ministry — which is controlled by Hamas — reported at least 3,000 Palestinians have been killed and more than 12,500 injured since the war began.
“She was pale, she was hungry. I won’t even go into more description, but she had been somewhere in the dark for 50 days,” Naftali said.
“The only blessing is that this woman, Hagar, had taken care of Abigail as though she were one of her own.”
In the three days since, Abigail has been making a triumphant recovery, Naftali said.
She was treated in a hospital, where her siblings and cousins visited her and cheered her spirits.
“She blossomed. The light came back,” she said.
“And every day we hope for Abigail to continue in this process.”
Despite a difficult road of healing ahead, Naftali said her family will not back down on pressuring the international community to push for the release of the roughly 180 hostages who remain in Hamas’ grasp.
“Some people might say, ‘Liz, Why are you still here [advocating]? You won the lotto – your relative is home with her family,'” she said.
“But what I’m here to say is [other] people who are … waiting for their loved ones to come back, we’re now a family. We are here for each other, and I will continue [fighting with them.]”
Calling the lawmakers to action, Naftali closed with an urgent message: “Keep [the hostages] coming out.”
“We need more to come out and we need them to come out really soon, because when I see those faces when you see those faces after 52 or 53 days [in captivity], you can’t stay there much longer.”