Hostages’ selfless courage glowed despite starvation and cruelty
The three Israeli hostages freed on Thursday amid scenes of chaos have revealed the ‘horror’ of their captivity, amid stories of extraordinary courage and selflessness in the face of Hamas cruelty.
The three Israeli hostages freed on Thursday amid scenes of chaos have revealed the “horror” of their captivity, amid stories of extraordinary courage and selflessness in the face of Hamas cruelty.
Agam Berger, a 20-year-old soldier, Arbel Yehud, 29, a civilian whose freedom became a point of tension with Israel, and Gadi Moses, 80, a potato farmer, were freed at two different locations, with Ms Yehud and Mr Moses visibly shaken as they were mobbed by screaming crowds of men.
After 482 days of captivity, the three returned to their families late Thursday night (AEDT), giving some of the most detailed descriptions yet of their deprivations at the hands of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
The two women and the female soldiers released last weekend have said they were forced to cook for their captors, but weren’t allowed to eat any of the food themselves, suffering prolonged periods of starvation. Kept in the dark for most of their captivity, they were allowed to shower only once a fortnight and were strictly forbidden from crying or supporting each other, told they would be severely punished if they disobeyed.
Yet they showed huge courage, with Ms Berger and Liri Albag, an IDF soldier freed last weekend refusing to move into the dark, airless tunnels where other hostages were being kept – forcing their captors to hold them above ground instead. While the conditions in which they were kept were still grim, at least they had light and air, they said.
What’s more, the trio freed on Thursday insisted on keeping Jewish traditions, including attempting to fast on Yom Kippur despite suffering severe malnutrition.
In an astonishing act of selflessness, Ms Albag also refused to be freed last week when she heard that Ms Berger’s release had been postponed. According to Israel’s Channel 12 news, Ms Albag told her captors she would not leave Ms Berger, who had been on the list for last week’s release but was kept in captivity because Islamic Jihad thought she was a soldier. In the end, the jihadis tricked Ms Albag into going with them by telling her they were going to film a propaganda video – only to hand her over to the Red Cross.
For her part, Ms Berger said she took comfort in knowing her friends had been released, and scratched her parents’ phone numbers on a plastic cup, using a pin she was given to close her hijab so they could contact her family.
She has also been revealed as the person who braided her fellow hostages’ hair before they were freed, a move that has led to Jewish women in the US braiding their hair with yellow ribbons in support of the hostages.
Ms Yehud, who was kept alone for her entire time in captivity, said Mr Moses was the first non-Palestinian face she had seen when they met shortly before they were handed over.
“I was mostly alone,” she told the Red Cross workers who met her.
“What you saw today — the armed men escorting me — that is just a fraction of the horror,” she added of the frightening mob scenes surrounding her release that have been viewed around the world.
She said she was told during her captivity that her brother, Dolev, had been murdered in the October 7 attack on Nir Oz but according to Israeli media, the full horror of the 2023 massacre has not yet sunk in.
גדי מוזס. ×§×™×‘×•×¦× ×™×§ גיבור ×ž× ×™×¨ עוז. pic.twitter.com/bD64AY68YH
— Or Heller ×ור הלר (@OrHeller) January 30, 2025
To many of his countrymen, Mr Moses has come to symbolise Israeli resilience, with pictures of him walking upright and with a faint smile through the Palestinian mobs on Thursday night going viral in Israel.
The octogenarian kibbutzim, who lost his partner Efrat and ex wife on October 7 and its aftermath, had no idea of their fates. Tragically, he only found out when he asked female soldiers at the IDF checkpoint how Efrat was, and was told that his partner, who had also been captured by Hamas, died when an Israeli helicopter fired on the vehicle in which she was being held.
Despite his grief, Mr Moses had only smiles for his family when they were reunited, and he told them he had refused to break down in captivity.
“I never broke, I never cried — I just waited for the moment I would be free,” he said, adding that what kept him alive was the knowledge that he would rebuild his kibbutz and his beloved community.
“Wow Gadi Moses, 80-year-old kibbutznik, made of humanity’s toughest stuff,” Ram Shefa, a former Israeli MP, posted on Facebook. “Welcome back to the community of Nir Oz and Israel.”
As they were being driven back into Israel, Mr Moses and Ms Yehud passed the kibbutzes from where they had been taken. Outside the kibbutz homes they saw their old friends and fellow farmers lined up to pay them tribute.
In a field, friends had written: “How good you came home.”
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