An 85-year-old Israeli woman freed by the Islamist group Hamas said this Tuesday that she lived “hell” when she was captured and taken to a “network of tunnels” by her kidnapperswho later treated her better during her more than two-week captivity in the Gaza Strip.
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Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, was released Monday night along with Nurit Kuper, 79. Both lived in the Nir Oz kibbutz, near the Gaza Strip and attacked by Hamas militants on October 7 as part of their bloody surprise offensive in Israel.
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Their husbands remain captives of the Palestinian Islamist movement.
“I lived through hell, I didn’t know I would find myself in that situation,” Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, told reporters in Tel Aviv, sitting in a wheelchair and next to her daughter.
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According to what she said, the militiamen took her away on a motorcycle, kidnapping her. “They hit me on the way; they didn’t break my ribs but they hurt me a lot and I had difficulty breathing”.
On the morning of the attack, coinciding with the end of a Jewish holiday, the octogenarian remembers “the intense shooting”, the “mass entry” of armed Hamas members into her agricultural cooperative and “the assaults” on her family’s homes. neighbors.
“They didn’t distinguish between old and young. I can’t stop replaying what happened in my mind.”
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After his kidnapping, he says that She was taken to “a network of underground tunnels” for two or three hours..
She was then taken to a room with 25 other hostages, and from there to a separate room with four captives, where she was installed on a mattress.
As he explained, his situation improved during his captivity. “They treated us well,” and “a doctor came every two or three days to check on us, and to make sure we had medication.”.
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‘Ready’
“They took into account all our needs,” and “they were very kind,” he said. “We ate the same thing as them: pitas with cream cheese, melted cheese and cucumbers. That was the meal of the day.”
The woman commented that the militiamen seemed to have prepared the kidnappings.
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“They seemed to be ready for this, they prepared for it a long time, they had everything that men and women need, even shampoo”he told journalists.
Lifshitz also explained that their kidnappers tried to talk to them about politics. “We didn’t want to talk about politics with them, we were their hostages, and we didn’t respond. But they talked about many things.”
Some 220 Israeli, foreign or binational hostages were kidnapped by Hamas commandos in the attack launched on October 7, which left more than 1,400 dead, mostly civilians, on the Israeli side.
Since then, and in retaliation, The Israeli army bombed the Gaza Strip daily, governed by Hamas, which this Tuesday reported that at least 5,791 people have died in the enclave since the start of the war..
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Last Friday, two American women, mother and daughter, were also released by Hamas. The Islamist movement claims that some hostages died in the Israeli bombings.
‘The government abandoned us’
After being released on Monday, “she was still smiling, it was touching,” her grandson Dekel Lifshitz told AFP.
“We have been lucky enough to be reunited with our grandmother,” says Dekel, who hopes for the release of all the hostages.
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Yocheved Lifshitz points out that In the weeks before the attack, some Gazans approached the border barrier with Israel, and “sent incendiary balloons to burn our fields”.
“The army, one way or another, didn’t take it seriously,” he says. “The government abandoned us.”
AFP
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