It became the nightly reality show watched by the whole country. Night after night, we followed along as Hamas gunmen handed the hostages over to the Red Cross, which put them in white trucks and drove them to the border between Israel and Gaza.
A few times there was a snag, and we held our collective breath as we waited to see if the hostage deal would fall apart. We ached for the families that were already waiting for their loved ones at the hospital. And we cheered as we watched the emotional reunions of parents and children who should never have been separated in the first place.
We watched skinny nine-year-old bespectacled Ohad Mundar run down the hospital corridor toward his father, who swept him up in his arms.
We devoured every shred of news about the released hostages. Ohad had schnitzel and puree for his first meal of freedom. He likes to play with Rubiks Cubes. And we laughed when his aunt Merav Aviv described his belated birthday party in the hospital.
“They were laughing like normal kids,” she told journalists. “It wasn’t that easy for him, but [his mother,] Keren, said he behaved very nice. There was a time when he was crying; and also, when he came back, when he saw a sensitive movie, when someone told him something so it was emotional. I hope he will get back to normal as soon as possible.”
Watching the hostage return
As we watched the hostages, there was relief that most of them seemed to be in relatively good health, with the exception of 84-year-old Alma Avraham, who was taken directly to the hospital upon her release in critical condition but has since improved.
But as more details of the emotional state of the children emerged, anger replaced relief for many Israelis.“When I met the children, the look of them, the impression on their faces, I could almost say that I saw a shadow of a child, and not a child,” Dr. Efrat Bron-Harlev, head of Schneider Children’s Medical Center for Israel, told Israel Television.
“They speak very, very quietly about the most terrible things that they’ve been undergoing, and it doesn’t matter if they’re eight, if they’re five, if they’re 13, it’s the same and it’s terrible. It’s much better to hear a child crying or shouting than speaking silently.”
AS THE groups of hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have been freed and reunited with their families, stories are beginning to emerge about their weeks in captivity.
Thomas Hand, the Irish-Israeli father of nine-year-old Emily Hand, who was taken from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7 and released this week, told CNN this week that his daughter thought she had been in captivity for a year instead of seven weeks.
Thomas’s anguish was palpable as he described the moment he reunited with his daughter after her release. “The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was she was just whispering; you couldn’t hear her. I had to put my ear on her lips,” he said. “She’d been conditioned not to make any noise.”
According to Hand on CNN, Emily told him she thought he had been taken hostage, too. When he asked her how long she thought she was gone, Emily replied “A year.” He told CNN, “Apart from the whispering, that was a punch in the guts. A year.”
Deborah Cohen, the aunt of 12-year-old Eitan Yahalomi, who was taken from Kibbutz Nahal Oz, told reporters that despite her hopes that he was treated well in captivity, he was not.
If previous hostage releases that took place this past week created the impression that Hamas is treating the Israeli hostages who are being held captive in the Gaza Strip well, Eitan’s testimony depicts an entirely different reality.In an interview with the French news outlet BFM, Cohen said that after speaking with Eitan it was clear to her that he went through “terrible things” while in captivity.
According to Cohen, Hamas forced him to watch an uncensored October 7 documentary.
“They forced him and other children to watch it. The entire movie. Whenever another child would cry during the screening, they would threaten them with a rifle to silence them,” Cohen explained.
“They would beat him,” Cohen added.
“He is a 12-year-old boy. We are talking about a 12-year-old. Maybe I am naive, but I did not expect to hear such descriptions. I wanted to hold on to the hope that he was treated well, but that was not the case. They are monsters,” Cohen concluded.
Although Eitan has been released, his father, Ohad, is still being held captive by Hamas.Cohen described the concern that her family is currently feeling after hearing about what Eitan was forced to experience.
“Before Eitan was released, our family was so excited. We anticipated his arrival all day. But now that I know what he went through, I am worried. Eitan’s father is still there, along with approximately 160 Israelis being held captive who also haven’t come back. That is a lot. It is hard to feel good after hearing about such experiences.”
Another report from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum claimed that some women abducted from Israel were kept in cages. In the days immediately following the October 7 massacres, videos from Hamas’s Telegram channel showed child hostages being kept in cages for the majority of the time.
One freed captive, Roni Krivoi – a dual Russian-Israeli national whose release reportedly came at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s request – told relatives that an Israeli airstrike partially collapsed the building in which he was being held, allowing him to flee.
He hid for four days, but Gazans who found him turned him over to Hamas, his aunt Elena Magid told Israeli public broadcaster KAN. She said the 25-year-old tried to reach the Gaza border, but “he didn’t have the means to understand where he was, and where to escape to.”
Hamas distributed a letter on Monday allegedly written by Danielle Aloni, who was kidnapped alongside her five-year-old daughter, Emilia, and held in captivity. In the letter, written in Hebrew and translated into Arabic, she reportedly thanked Hamas for the “extraordinary humanity” provided to her daughter, who “felt like a queen.”
The letter also read, “I will forever be a prisoner of love because [Emilia] did not leave here with psychological trauma forever.” The Aloni family has confirmed neither this letter nor the statements made in it, though it has been widely distributed on social media by the Hamas terrorist organization.
This letter is one of many that hostages were forced to write, according to Israeli media reports. Captives also reported being provided with limited food while being held hostage, without clear reports of physical abuse or torture. Of the small rations they received – sometimes only rice and pita at best – the hostages were often left to cook the food for themselves and for the children held with them. They also said their final two weeks saw supplies running low.
Israeli Health Ministry officials reported that although children who had been released appeared to be in reasonable nutritional condition, most of the adults released had lost between 20 to 35 pounds (9-16 kilos) while in captivity.
FOR MANY families of the hostages, the hardest part is that families are now divided instead of being reunited. While the hostage releases so far have been almost all women and children (except for Thai workers and Russian citizens), the fathers and grandfathers remain in captivity. Nine children are still missing and are believed to be held by other terrorist groups.
Many among the freed abductees witnessed the killing of family members on October 7. Others learned of loved ones’ deaths only upon being released; military and medical personnel involved in the hostages’ initial reception were told to gently defer questions, especially from children who had lost one or both parents.
“I want to say thank you to everyone who helped bring my sisters and my nieces home. We are so happy to be able to hug them again, something that we dreamed of for the past 50 and more days,” Moran Aloni, whose family members, including his two adorable three-year-old nieces, were freed this week. “However, this happiness has another part of fear around my brother-in-law David and his brother Ariel, and we are not going to stop fighting, we’re going to fight even more, in order to bring them and the rest of the hostages to the hands of the families. I just want to mention to remind everyone that there is no win without all the hostages returning to their families.”
Rachel Goldberg Polin has spoken at the UN, met the pope, and continues to work day and night for the freedom of her son Hersh Goldberg Polin, 23, who was severely wounded when he was captured from the Supernova music festival on October 7. She has since seen video of Hersh in Hamas captivity.
Hersh’s left arm was blown off at the elbow, and he would need surgery and antibiotics. That said, she said it is a fairly straightforward surgery that any general surgeon could do, and she is hopeful that Hersh received the medical treatment he needed.
She says that it is has been wonderful watching the hostage releases.
“It’s been the first moment of respite and sliver of light and tiny, tiny hopeful moment we’ve had so far, when we see people being returned to their loved ones,” she said. She mentioned four-year-old Abigail Idan, a US-Israeli citizen, who was freed this week, whose parents were killed in front of her.
And, of course, she is waiting and praying for her son to come home.
“Hersh is a wonderful, kind, curious person,” she said. “He has a sharp but not mean sense of humor and is a voracious reader. He loves music and music festivals, and he was always obsessed with travel. For his birthday in second grade, he asked for a subscription to National Geographic, and he would read it cover to cover.”
Speaking of reading, Rachel said the book that Hersh was reading, and that is still on his nightstand in his room, is The Art of Happiness by the Dalai Lama.
Jerusalem Post Staff, Los Angeles Times, Reuters and Walla contributed to this report.