Agam Berger, an IDF surveillance soldier who was kidnapped on October 7 and freed last month, said Tuesday that it was hard while in captivity to hear about the debate in Israel over the costs of a deal to bring the hostages home.

Asked about suggestions that the price of a ceasefire deal was “too high,” Berger told Kan public radio: “It’s not their fault that they were kidnapped, they need to know that people are fighting for them.”

“We have to pay a price, but we have to keep fighting for the [hostages left behind]… the young men are being abused in a different way,” she said.

Six male hostages were released on Saturday. Soon after their release, some of the men recalled that their captors abused them by shackling them or denying them food.

Berger said hearing about the debate around a hostage deal while in captivity made the captives “feel like our lives weren’t worth enough.” However, she said, they heard senior officials saying they were ready to pay the price of a deal, and that gave them hope.

Berger said that in January 2024 they were given things that IDF troops left behind, including a Siddur prayerbook and a newspaper, which “gave us some answers” about the situation in Israel.

However, after the rescue by Israeli forces of Shlomo Ziv, Noa Argamani, Andrey Kozlov and Almog Meir Jan in June 2024, her captors took away their radio, cutting off much of their access to news.

Berger served as a surveillance soldier at the Nahal Oz IDF base that was raided by Hamas terrorists. During the raid, more the 50 soldiers were killed and ten were taken hostage. Berger was released in January from captivity as part of the ongoing ceasefire deal, one week after four of her fellow surveillance soldiers — Liri Albag, Naama Levy, Daniella Gilboa and Karina Ariev — were released.

When Berger was left alone in captivity after her four comrades were freed, she said she asked herself, “Is there a ceasefire? Am I going home? I believed in it, but it was still a surprise to be told that in two days I’d be home.” She said she was not allowed to take anything back with her, including a notebook she and Albag had written in while in captivity.

She said she was forced to dress in the fake IDF uniform they gave her and to film videos thanking her captors: “In that moment I couldn’t say what I wanted, I did what I could but I didn’t care, the main thing was that I was going home.”

Bar Kupershtein alive

Meanwhile, Dvir Kupershtein, the brother of hostage Bar Kupershtein, told a Knesset committee on Tuesday that his brother is alive, but might not be in another minute or hour or day.

“We know that Bar is alive 100 percent, but tomorrow everything could change, or even in another hour or minute,” said Dvir of his brother, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.

According to Channel 12 news, Kupershtein’s family received evidence from the most recently released hostages that he is undoubtedly still alive.

Kupershtein, who was working as festival security, is not slated for release in the current first stage of the ceasefire deal, with future possible stages hanging in the balance.

“He’s not just another hostage, he’s my brother and he’s a hero,” his brother Dvir told the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee. “He evacuated the wounded under fire to save lives, he went back again and again to save people, and when he was the one who needed help, there was nobody there to save him.”

During the Hamas atrocities of October 7, 2023, terrorists killed some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapped 251.

Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 63 hostages, including 62 of the 251 abducted on October 7. They include the bodies of at least 36 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Hamas has so far released 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals; and the bodies of four slain Israeli captives — Shiri, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and Oded Lifshitz — during a ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.

Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.

The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas and is counted among the 63 hostages.