Released Hamas hostage: ‘I went through hell’

Yocheved Lifshitz, one of two elderly grandmothers freed by Hamas on Monday, revealed she was beaten by her terrorist captors after being taken from her home on October 7.

Yocheved Lifshitz says she went through ‘hell’ being held hostage by Hamas after being taken from her home.

Yocheved Lifshitz, one of two elderly grandmothers freed by Hamas on Monday, said she went through hell, having been beaten by Hamas soldiers when she was kidnapped from her home on October 7.

Eighty-five-year-old Mrs Lifshitz, who was released along with her neighbour Nurit Cooper, 79, looked frail as she faced a press conference in a wheelchair at the Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv.

Speaking in Hebrew, with her daughter Sharone Lifschitz translating, Mrs Lifshitz described being taken hostage when Hamas soldiers broke into her home in the kibbutz of Nir Oz.

A quarter of the 400 Nir Oz kibbutz residents were either killed or kidnapped.

She told of the horrific ordeal of being detained and thrown across the back of a motorbike, her legs on one side and her head on the other and taken through ploughed fields. When she was taken into Gaza the Hamas fighters beat her with sticks. She and other hostages were then marched for several kilometres on wet ground inside a “spiderweb” of underground tunnels. She said: “I went through hell”.

Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper (also known as Nurit Yitzhak) who were held hostages by Palestinian Hamas militants, are released by the militants.

After being attacked on the first day, Mrs Lifschitz said she was then well-treated, including being visited by a doctor, while being held inside the tunnels for two weeks.

She said she had originally been held with 25 hostages, but then she had been taken with four others into a separate room, given medicine and food.

“It was difficult but we will get through this,” she said.

Mrs Lifschitz’s family who had flocked to her bedside were relieved she “can walk, she can talk, she can hug her grandchildren”, but were highly concerned about their grandfather, Oded Lifshitz, 83.

He is still being held as a hostage, as is Mrs Cooper’s husband Amiram Cooper, 85.

Meanwhile the Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanhayu met with France President Emmanuel Macron.

Mr Netanhayu said “Hamas must be destroyed” and Israel had to have a decisive victory against Hamas. He warned Hezbollah that if it entered the conflict “the devastation against Hezbollah will be unimaginable”.

“The fight against terrorism must be without mercy but not without rules”, Mr Macron said, adding that all of the hostages, believed to be more than 220, had to be liberated.