For the first time, two women who were held hostage by Hamas told an Israeli parliamentary committee about their captivity. They and the kidnapped girls suffered sexual assaults every day, they said.
In November, Aviva Siegel and Chen Goldstein-Almog were among 80 hostages released by the radical Islamic group Hamas during a seven-day humanitarian ceasefire and allowed to return to Israel. The two women have now reported to a parliamentary committee about their arrest. It was characterized by sexual violence.
“Girls treated like dolls”
There was not a minute in their 51 days of captivity when the hostages were not abused, Haaretz newspaper quoted Aviva Siegel as saying as she escaped her home in the southern Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. on October 7 Israel was kidnapped. The 62-year-old explained that the terrorists treated the kidnapped girls like dolls “with which they can do whatever they want.”
“I can't breathe, I can't handle it, it's too heavy. It's been almost four months and they're still there,” Siegel said, according to media reports. The captive girls were like her daughters, she continued. According to the media, the woman emphasized that men had the same experiences. “They can’t get pregnant, but they go through that too.”
“The world is silent”
Her husband is still detained in the Gaza Strip. “I can’t understand how the world is silent,” Siegel explained. According to the Times of Israel, her daughter told deputies: “Right now someone is being raped in a tunnel.”
Hostage Chen Goldstein-Almog, who was also released, said some of the prisoners had stopped menstruating. The 48-year-old woman explained that this could be due to “the difficult conditions of captivity” and that she hopes they are not pregnant. The hostages' biggest fear, according to Goldstein-Almog, was that Israeli authorities would hand them over.
1,200 people died in the attack
On October 7, 2023, terrorists from Hamas and other extremist groups carried out a massacre in southern Israel. They killed 1,200 people and kidnapped another 253 to the Gaza Strip. Israel believes that 105 of them are still alive and that many are being held in Hamas' network of underground tunnels.
The freed hostages had already painted a horror picture at rallies in recent weeks and highlighted the circumstances in which the kidnapped people were detained in the Gaza Strip. Speakers also spoke, among other things, of sexual abuse of women. There are also numerous reports of brutal sexual violence against women and girls in the October 7 massacre.
Bettina Meier, ARD Tel Aviv, tagesschau, January 23, 2024, 3pm