Parents of four young women’s Israeli hostages released from Hamas’s captivity told the BBC about how they were abused by their daughters, including hunger strikes, intimidated and threatened with armed men, and forced to cook and clean.
They talked about how hostages were conducted in underground tunnels and buildings, witnessed physical violence and were made to participate in the propaganda videos of Hamas, including, in one case, forcing their own death.
They said that women found strength through the history, drawing and diary.
None of the women gave interviews in the media since their release, and their parents say that full information that they have survived is still arising. There are also things they cannot talk about with the fears that it can be threatened with a gasp.
Three of the four women whose parents talked to the BBC were soldiers abducted by Hamas from the Nakhal -Oza Army base near Gaza on October 7, 2023.
Access hostage to food and their treatment with men ranged in the 15 months they passed, their parents said. They were moved between places, rarely seeing sunlight.
“It was very different between the places she went – it could be a good tunnel, it could be a very bad tunnel. It could be a good home or a bad home,” said the 20th Agam Berger’s 20 – Nahal Oz.
In some places there was good food, some had “very bad food … They just tried to survive,” Berger said.
Reuters“They (and their invaders) had to run from one place to another because they were in the military war. It was very dangerous,” said Orly Gilboa, whose daughter Daniel was also stolen from the base.
If Daniel looked Issue of three male hostages last week “Who came out thin and exhausted – she said to her mother:” If I was released two months ago, I would probably look like them. “
“She became thinner, she lost his weight through captivity. But in the last two months they have been given a lot of food to gain weight,” says Ms Gilboa.
Other parents also reported significant weight loss. The daughter of Maire Leshem was taken by Hamas from the new music festival.
The 24th Roma was released in the first week of ceasefire in January – it lost “20% body weight,” says her mother.
Ms Gilboa says the most difficult thing she has experienced is a video that her daughter was killed. Her invaders poured her powder so that she looked as if she had been covered with plaster as if she had been killed in an Israeli military strike.
“I think everyone who saw it was believed, but I just told myself that it couldn’t be,” she said the BBC.
GPO/ReutersThe war was caused by Hamas’s unprecedented attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, when the militants killed about 1,200 people and took another 251 hostage.
According to the Ministry of Health, Hamas, which is being managed by the territory, more than 48 230 people were killed in Gaza. About two -thirds of the gas buildings were destroyed or damaged, the UN believes.
So far, 16 Israeli and five Thai hostages have been exchanged for more than 600 Palestinian prisoners held in Israel as part of the ceasefire agreement, which began on January 19.
Mr. Berger says his daughter Agama threatened her captives and witnessed physical abuse while in captivity.
“Sometimes they tortured other women’s hostages before her eyes,” he says, referring to the attack on Amit Susana, a former hostage, which was released in November 2023.
Mr. Berger says his daughter told how they were constantly watched by armed men, “playing with weapons and hand grenades.”
He says that men -adjusts treated women with “big disrespect”, including forcing them to clean and cook.
“It really worries her. She is a girl that if she has something to say. She’s not shy. And sometimes she told them what they think about them and their behavior,” he says.
He adds that in a small act of resistance, Agam refused to do any work on Saturday, on the day of the rest. The men who detained her accepted it.
They were also not allowed to speak loudly.
“When Agam came (back to Israel), she wanted to perform all the time … She had no voice in a day because she said so much,” says Mr. Berger.
Yoni Levi, whose daughter Sam, 20 years old, was also taken out of the army base, says she was sometimes kept in places where she played a TV or radio.
One day, he saw his father talking on TV. “It gave her a lot of hope and optimism … that no one would forget it, and we will do everything you need to bring her from this hell.”
GpoHe says that Hamas’s attack on the army base was “much more traumatic than captivity.”
“It may change, but at this stage we believe that this is the most tragic day she talked about,” says Mr. Levi.
Personnel from Naami show her and other blood soldiers on this day, surrounded by armed men in a room in the base before being forced to a vehicle and taken to gas.
Three women’s soldiers whose parents talked to the BBC are among the five of the women’s military units in Nahal-Oz, released in the first round of ceasefire.
The participants of the unit known in Hebrew as Tatspitoniot, are instructed to observe the gas border and seek signs of something suspicious. The survivors and relatives of some of the killed on this day say they warned for months that Hamas was preparing for the attack.
A few days before the October 7 attack, Daniel was at home at a break from the service. Then she said to her mother, “Mummy, when I return to the army, will be war.”
“I didn’t think it would be such a war, and of course my daughter will be hostage,” says Ms Gilboa.
Ms Gilboa and the family of two other observers who talked to the BBC say they join the calls to the request of what happened.
Their daughters are said to remain concerned about the conditions of those who are still in gas and urged to stop the fire.
ReutersMeanwhile, Mrs. Leshei is saying that he is still studying what happened to her daughter with roms.
She was shot at the Nova Music Festival, and her mother says she was not properly treated, leaving her “an open wound where she saw the bones.”
“That’s what we can know about and what she is talking about. Other things, I think, will take time.”
Ms. Leshem head says that Romi described her release in the first week of the truce as “intimidation” and “terrible”. It was surrounded by militants and crowds. But the moment of their reunion was “so powerful”.
ReutersThe parents also told how their daughters found ways to worry every day in captivity – by drawing, making a note or to share stories with each other.
“They wrote as much as they could, every day – what happened where they were moving, who were guards and such things,” Mr. Berger says.
Being in captivity, young women dreamed of things they wanted to do when they returned home: having got a haircut and eating sushi.
Daniel attracted a butterfly with the word “freedom” while in captivity – now she tattooed on her hand.
They adapt to life in Israel, and their families say they make a step -by -step recovery.
At the time of reunion with his daughter Naam, he is still blurred, says Mr. Levi, but he remembers emotions.
“The feeling was that … I will take care of you now and everything will be fine. Dad here. That’s all. And then everything was quiet.”
Additional reporting by Naomi Sherbel-Bal
Reuters