Gaza, the gesture of the 85-year-old released pacifist: she shakes hands with the Hamas militiaman and says “shalom” to him
A handshake that went around the world. A video showing 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, one of two hostages freed yesterday in the Gaza Strip, has gone viral as she was released.
A handshake that went around the world. The video showing 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, one of the two hostages freed last night at the Rafah crossing, on the border between Egypt and the Gaza Strip, has gone viral. In the video, at the moment of her release, the old woman is seen turning to shake hands with a Hamas militiaman, saying “shalom”, a Jewish greeting which means “peace”.
Lifshitz was then loaded into one of two ambulances that came to pick up her and 79-year-old Nurit Cooper. Both were kidnapped along with their husbands in the unprecedented attack on October 7. The militiamen took them from their homes in the Nir Oz kibbutz, near the Gaza border. The husbands, aged 83 and 84, have not been released.
To the BBC, her daughter Sharone explained that she was not surprised by the woman’s gesture. “It’s like her,” commented the girl, who lives in London, explaining that her mother is a peace activist, as is her father, who in the past took part in some missions to bring medicines to the border with Gaza.
“They put me on a motorcycle, they blew up the fence which cost two million dollars to build but was useless.
“I was taken hostage, there was no distinction between old and young. It was very painful,” she said during a press conference held at the Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon, recalling the motorcycle journey after the kidnapping. “They drove through plowed fields and during the journey people beat me with sticks,” she added. Once we arrived in the strip she had to walk for several kilometers in the tunnels used by the militiamen. “They told us that they believe in the Quran and that they would do no harm. That we would have the same conditions as them,” she continued, as reported by Israeli broadcaster i24 News.
“There was a paramedic and a doctor also came every two days. We lay on the mattresses and they took care of hygiene, so as not to make us sick. They were very afraid that diseases would spread. They made sure we had everything, they were very friendly,” she underlined, before concluding with an attack on the government and the institutions that failed to foresee the attack. “We were very hurt that the IDF and Shin Bet did not know about the attack. We were the government’s scapegoat.”
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