Whipped, caged, tortured: the terrible abuse of the Israeli hostages
Stuffed into a pit, starved, locked in a room alongside other, dead hostages. Details of the abuse the Israeli captives suffered are slowly coming out.
Whipped, stuffed into a pit, caged. Locked in a room alongside dead hostages. Tortured – both physically and psychologically – and starved constantly, so badly that many of them lost 40 per cent of their body weight.
Details of the abuse the Israeli hostages suffered in their more than 700 days of captivity are emerging, shared by families horrified by the suffering of their loved ones.
But there were moments of humour, of defiance, of light in the darkness. One such story came from Yosef-Chaim Ohana, who suffered some of the worst treatment at the hands of his Hamas captors.
Just days before he was released, Yosef-Chaim was stuffed in a pit with six other hostages with so little room they could not even sit on the floor, much less lie down.
They were led through tunnel after tunnel before being forced into a hole in the ground, his father told Israeli media.
“They could not sit, only lean against the wall while standing,” Rabbi Avi Ohana said. “He lacked oxygen. I thank God, who made him strong. What kept him going was his family.”
But Yosef-Chaim remained defiant throughout his captivity, even turning an instrument of psychological torture to his advantage. Rabbi Avi told Kan Moreshet radio that his son and another hostage were given a radio that was programmed to play only Muslim religious messages. But the pair linked the radio’s wiring to cables hanging down in the tunnel where they were being held, allowing them to tune into Israeli Army Radio, where Yosef-Chaim heard his father being interviewed.
“He said to himself, ‘My father is alive! He is waiting for me!’ and it gave him new life,” the rabbi said.
“Just as we think of them and worry about them, they also worried about us to the same extent. He was so happy when he heard my voice. He heard my words of faith and my encouragement. It gave him more strength to continue all these months.”
Rom Braslavski was held alone for almost his entire time in captivity – his only company the bodies of other hostages, his mother Tami told Israeli TV.
She said her son was placed with other hostages in a Hamas tunnel two days before he was released. During his captivity, he was psychologically tortured, including being shown edited footage that suggested his parents had given up on him, and that Iran had bombed Israel, she said.
Ms Braslavski said her son was offered bribes of more food and better conditions if he read the Koran, or fasted during Ramadan, but he refused to give in.
“His captors demanded that he convert to Islam. He refused. He went through abuse, and I don’t want to elaborate further,” she told Hebrew TV. She said he had spent his days since his release standing by a window, looking at the sky.
The most dangerous time of his captivity came when Rom lit a fire to try to cook pasta, and the smoke was detected by Palestinians nearby, she said. “He feared he would be lynched,” she added.
Nimrod Cohen was held for 18 months in a cage in one of the tunnels, blindfolded and regularly beaten, his brother Yotam told the Haaretz newspaper.
Yitam said his brother was treated worse than other hostages because he was a soldier. He was told that “Israel had given up on them, the government didn’t want to bring them back”.
Avinatan Or, who was also held alone for two years, was beaten after trying to escape.
“Avinatan tried to escape from captivity, and then they beat him,” his father Yaron told Kan radio. “He was handcuffed to the bars. It was a barred place, 1.8m high, and the length of it was the length of the mattress, plus a little. You can call it a cage.”
After 737 days in captivity, the hostages face a long journey for their bodies and minds to heal, experts have predicted.
Itai Pessach, associate director-general of Sheba Medical Centre where some of the hostages are being treated, said it could take years to achieve a semblance of normality.
However, Professor Pessach added: “As a physician and as a human being, I can’t emphasise enough the impact of being surrounded by their loved ones on the general wellbeing and their ability to heal.”
Michal Steinman, Rabin Medical Centre’s director of nursing, said the five hostages being treated there had “severe but treatable nutrition problems”.
“The body remembers those 700-plus days of captivity and starvation,” Professor Steinman told the Times of Israel. “Medically, right now, we don’t have any surprises. The hostages interact, they smile. They came with a big drive to heal, recover and rehabilitate.”
Each of the hostages has been assigned a personal nutritionist, with menus tailored to blood tests and their particular nutrient deficiencies, in order to aid their recovery, The Jerusalem Post reports.
After two years of starvation, their bodies can’t cope with a sudden influx of food so the medical centres are keeping their diets under strict control.
When they first arrived at the hospitals, each hostage was given tea with a teaspoon of sugar, a few biscuits, and apple sauce. They were then assessed according to their body mass index, for which the normal range is 18.5 to 24.9. Those who had a BMI of less than 16 were given glucose intravenously.
They are being given easy-to-digest and protein-rich foods such as yoghurt, eggs and soft cheeses. They have also been able to ask their families to bring them their favourite meals.
But there are two items the hostages haven’t been offered, and which they say they’ll never eat again, white rice and pita bread – for many of them, the only food they were offered during their months of darkness.
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