Teen ex-hostage reveals Hamas guard’s sexual abuse

Dafna Elyakim’s captor threatened to forcibly marry her and keep her in Gaza forever.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A teenaged ex-hostage revealed Tuesday for the first time the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her Hamas guard.

Then 15, Dafna Elyakim was abducted along with her eight-year-old sister, Ela, from their home in Kibbutz Nachal Oz during the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel on October 7, 2023.

They were among 251 hostages taken by Palestinian terrorists who murdered 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals by shooting, beheading, and burning them to death and committing atrocities on their bodies, including mass rapes.

While their father, Noam, was likely murdered by the terrorists, an IDF investigation later found that his partner, Dikla, and their 17-year-old son, Tomer, were probably killed accidentally by IDF soldiers battling the invaders in the kibbutz.

Speaking at the Civil Advocacy Center’s TEEN SPIRIT conference, Elyakim recounted, “We had one guard with us, one of the terrorists, who would touch me all the time or tell me that I was going to stay there, that they would return Ela and everyone else, and only I would stay behind with him, and that we were going to have children together and a house and all that.”

Although he threatened constantly that he “was coming with me to shower,” she s“wouldn’t let him,” and he never actually did so, she added.

In an interview with Channel 12 last year, Elyakim focused on the psychological abuse she suffered and the need to care for her little sister.

The terrorists told their captives that no one in Israel was fighting to bring them home, she said.

“I thought that no one cared at all about us returning, that the people here weren’t interested. That’s what they told us all the time, that they’d rather we stay in Gaza and come back as corpses.”

“All I thought about was, ‘What about my family, what about my friends, what was happening in the country, if they had reached all of Israel, if they had destroyed all of Israel,’” she said, as she only received a few bits of information from listening to the radio in Arabic.

She said that she always made sure that Ela did everything before her, whether it was eating or showering on the few occasions they were allowed to do so, and they comforted each other throughout their 51 days of their captivity.

“We were always with each other, and if she cried, then I was with her. And when I cried, she was with me,” Elyakim said.

The two girls were released on November 26, 2023, during a weeklong ceasefire in the war sparked by the invasion.

The Civil Advocacy Center bills itself as the largest advocacy organization in Israel, whose goal is “to spread the truth and fight anti-Semitism that is spreading worldwide.” Seven hundred youth who were trained by the Center to speak for Israel and created various outreach programs during their course attended the conference.