‘I thought I’d die in Gaza’ – Released hostages begin to share their ordeals

Held both above and below ground and moved dozens of times, one was forced to have a medical procedure without anesthetics.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The three hostages released Sunday have begun to share details of their captivity and the terror they felt even as they were being released with a crowd of Hamas fighters surrounding them, Channel 12 reported Tuesday.

Doron Steinbrecher, Romy Gonen, and Emily Damari were often but not always kept together, they said, cooking and helping each other.

Gonen, who had been a medic, cared for Damari’s wounded hand and leg as best she could under the circumstances, according to Hebrew-language media.

They were moved dozens of times over the 15 months of the war, with some of them forced to spend the vast majority of their captivity in tunnels and not seeing the light of day.

Some also spent time in places above ground, including humanitarian areas set up by the IDF in the Gaza Strip for civilians who were ordered out of their cities before the army would engage Hamas forces there.

Some received medications they needed, but at least one had to undergo a medical procedure without being given any anesthetic for the pain.

Their captors sometimes allowed them to watch the rallies for the hostages in Israel on television and even heard their families on the radio fighting for them. They also were exposed to what happened during the Hamas-led invasion, they said.

“We understood that our families survived but found out that we had lost a lot of friends,” they said.

They were terrified about what would happen to them, with one of them saying, “I didn’t think I would return. I was sure I would die in Gaza.”

They had no idea they would be freed until Sunday morning, they said, and “couldn’t believe it when they told us we would be home very soon.”

Their joy was tempered with fear at the end because of Hamas’s last act of cruelty.

“We were deathly afraid at the transfer point from the hands of the terrorists to the Red Cross,” they said, “because of the combination of the armed terrorists and the crowds of Gazans” that surrounded them as they moved from the Hamas cars to those of the international body, whose sole role in the conflict has been as a taxi service between Gaza and Israel for released hostages.

Video of the transfer that Hamas publicized showed the women getting out of their car completely surrounded and hemmed in by dozens of uniformed and masked men holding automatic weapons.

Many of the Arabs dressed in civilian clothing were yelling phrases such as “Allahu Akbar [God is great]” as they held up cellphones to record the event, a fact that belies the image Hamas tries to project to the world of a poor and starving population.

The vagueness of which hostage said what was due to the censorship rules the media outlet has to abide by, the report noted.