Child hostages freed from Hamas ‘were only just kept alive’

Families of released child hostages say they were starved by their captors and so traumatised many won’t let their parents out of their sight, amid fears for the 137 hostages left behind.

Israelis at a prayer event for the hostages in Tel Aviv. Picture: Getty Images.

A week after being freed from spending 50 or more days in captivity the children of southern Israel are hurting.

It is not true that they have been returned unharmed, says Yael Mozer Glassberg, one of the senior doctors from the Schneider Children’s medical centre where 19 children, five mothers and one grandmother were looked after in the hours following their release from Gaza.

The paediatrician says the psychological scars will last a lifetime, and warns that the teenage hostages are perhaps the most fragile of all.

She said: “The psychological terror was terrible. It’s unfair to say they came back with more or less good physical condition. No, they didn’t,’’ adding that she released one teenager from the hospital over the weekend “but I really worry for him”.

Younger children generally had the protection of their mothers and sometimes fathers, but teenagers, already dealing with changing bodies and hormones are in a particularly vulnerable time of life, she believed.

Israelis are angered that people around the world watched the propaganda of Hamas: the smiles and waves as the hugely relieved and often shocked hostages being handed over to the International Red Cross which gave a wrong impression that the terrorists had been simply babysitting them all this time.

Released Israeli hostages siblings Maya and Itay Regev (R) arrive home in the city of Herzliya near Tel Aviv. Picture: AFP.

Instead the hostages have arrived with deep wounds – physical and emotional. They had lice infestations all over their bodies that has taken half a dozen attempts to get rid of having not washed for seven weeks.

They have all lost more than ten to 15 per cent of their body weight, having so little food and water that, as happened in the Holocaust, the protective instincts of the parents and older children were to starve themselves so the younger ones had priority.

Two boys, Yagil Yaakov, 12, and Or Yaakov, 16, were freed last Wednesday and had been branded using the hot exhaust pipe of a motorcycle to identify them in case they escaped. Eitan Yahalomi, 12, had been held in isolation for the first 16 days and forced to watch videos of the Hamas atrocities.

The Israeli hospital, having gathered psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, paediatricians and other experts to help the hostages were shocked to find that their plans were turned upside down once the hostages arrived in their care.

They had prepared that the hostages would want to gorge themselves on food, and they had strategies ready to deal with that – as eating too much too soon can cause medical complications – but doctors found that they had to encourage the children to eat.

“They would still be pulling apart a small piece of bread to nibble on a bit and save some of the rest for later,’’ Dr Mozer Glassberg said.

She said the hostages had been fed irregular food at irregular hours in captivity, but the amounts were always limited no matter where the hostages were held.

“At 10am they may get one biscuit and just one dried date and then at 5pm a small amount of rice,’’ she said. The hostages were often crammed into one room and weren’t allowed to talk. Children were threatened with a gun if they cried.

She said the psychological torture has been deeply scarring: “One of the teenagers, they told him every day, several times a day, that ‘don’t worry, you will be here at least for a year, if you go back at all’. And when you’re alone as a teenager without your parents you believe that.”

And the silence has been concerning. Thomas Hand says his nine year old daughter Emily, one of the first released, continues to talk in whispers.

Moran Aloni’s older sister Danielle Aloni, 45, and her five-year-old daughter, Emilia, were abducted from the Nir Oz kibbutz. Sharon’s husband David is still captive. Mr Aloni’s younger sister Sharon Aloni Cunio, 34, was also kidnapped with her three-year-old twin daughters, Emma and Yuli.

He says his released sister Sharon also speaks very quietly. “She doesn’t know why she does this,’’ he said.

Filmmaker Hen Avigdori says his released daughter Noam has been playing “old school board and card games” with the family and that her school friends “have wrapped her with love “. But she won’t allow her father out of her sight.

He said: “Noam, my 12-year-old daughter, doesn’t allow me to leave the house. I just asked her can I take the trash down, and she wouldn’t permit it, so she’s hanging on to me very closely.”

Other hostage families have reported that children, young and old, follow them around the house, even to the bathroom, fearing being left alone.

Mr Aloni said his three year old twin nieces were waking up crying and struggling to sleep at night. His other niece, five year old Emilia clings to her mother.

“Emilia is not allowing her to go without her, nowhere, even if it’s for the bathroom or just a room upstairs in my parents’ home,’’ he said.

Mr Aloni said other hostage families still waiting for their loved ones were now highly anxious. He said Hamas had “just keep the hostages alive”, and it was clear that those still in Gaza would not be able to endure such conditions for a long time.

“It is not something they can survive,’’ he warned.

Mr Avigdori said he had a phone call this week from the father of hostage boys still in Gaza who “was absolutely drowning in despair” and begging for reassurance that his boys would be able to survive the conditions.

“I had to give him hope,’’ he said. “We have to make this end as soon as possible, please help my brothers and sisters of the kidnapped families’’.

Around 137 hostages remain in Gaza, Israeli officials have said, and Mr Aloni said the biggest fear of the families of those remaining were that they would be forgotten or ignored.

Yet the families who have had their children, mothers and wives returned have instead redoubled their efforts. They have been pressuring the Israeli government and Hamas to reignite a truce to free the remaining hostages.

“It is because we understand what they are going through,’’ Mr Aloni said.