The war between Hamas and IsraelDossierSince Friday and the first hostage releases, it has been their relatives who have been telling about their experiences. Ruth Munder was the first to speak at length in person about the details of her captivity.
In the photos of her release, the colors almost make you forget what she has just experienced. Green tunic, blue bag with white dots and, above all, a big smile on her face. Ruth Munder, who was held hostage by Hamas for more than six weeks, was one of the first to testify in person and describe her detention conditions on Israeli television.
In the beginning, “everything was fine,” she told Channel 13, an interview reviewed by the Associated Press on Tuesday, November 28. They were served tea in the morning, but Ruth Munder woke up late to pass the time. Sweets were distributed to the children. During the day they all got “chicken with rice, all sorts of canned goods and cheese”. And more tea for the evening.
During the Hamas attack on October 7, Ruth Munder was abducted from her home in Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel, along with her daughter Keren and grandson Ohad, who was celebrating her ninth birthday in captivity. Ruth and Keren learned about the deaths of their son and brother in custody from the radio that a Hamas member was listening to. The father, Abraham Munder, is still a Hamas hostage.
“I was optimistic”
Thin, Ruth Munder, 78, returned in relatively good physical condition, according to initial health reports from Israeli authorities. She confirmed the reports of the parents of other hostages, saying that they had to sleep on plastic chairs (she had a sheet, which was not the case for all of them) and that some children slept on mats on the floor. According to this grandmother, the boys who were there talked late into the night. Sometimes some children cried.
Diets changed drastically when “the economic situation was not good and people were hungry,” a deterioration attributed in part to the Israeli blockade of Gaza, which led to shortages of food, fuel and other basic products.
Unlike other hostages who described being held in Hamas tunnels beneath Gaza, Ruth Munder lived with others in a room that was “suffocating” and the hostages, whom she did not name, could not open the blinds , but she managed to open a window. “It was very difficult,” she explained, but she always had hope: “I was optimistic. When we arrived in Gaza, I knew that one day we would be released.”
In a television interview on Sunday, Keren Munder’s cousin Merav Mor Raviv said their guards were armed but their faces were uncovered and not covered. “It was scary, they did that to them over and over again,” she described, putting her thumb on her neck to pretend to cut her throat. “They were not tortured or ill-treated, but some days they had nothing to eat and sometimes they had one and a half to two hours between the time they were asked to go to the toilet and the time they were asked to go to the toilet The toilet waits for hours. allowed them,” she further testified.
Physical and psychological test
Since their return, which was closely monitored medically and medially by Israeli authorities, the freed hostages have largely stayed away from the public scene. Ruth Munder’s story is based on an agreement between Israel and Hamas to extend their ceasefire. The exchange of hostages for prisoners will therefore continue until at least Thursday.
All of the hostages released so far have undergone physical and psychological tests before returning home at the six Israeli hospitals mobilized to receive them. In addition to physical recovery, it will also take a long time to recover psychologically from what you have experienced. Medical staff heard “very difficult and complex stories about their time in Hamas captivity,” said Itai Pessach, director of the Edmond and Lily Safra Children’s Hospital. There is still a very, very long way to go before they are healed.”