Hostages freed after more than a year of Hamas captivity have a long road ahead as they try to recover from hunger, deprivation, and the effects of being held underground in the dark for long periods.
Doctors fear their vision may suffer permanent damage, a spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said at a press conference on Jan. 27.
And the effects are mental as well, the spokesman, David Mencer, said. “Clearly, there has been psychological torture.”
Hamas, on Jan. 25, published an image of what it represented as Daniella Gilboa’s white funeral shroud, Mencer said, citing the effect on Daniella’s mother. The girl was returned alive the next day.
“These young ladies face an emotional and medically complex road to recovery,” he said.
Some spent 15 months or most of it underground.
“Daniella, 20, still has a bullet in her leg after she was shot by Hamas,” Mencer said.
The girls have told doctors they were fed only one or two pieces of pita bread a day “until their stomachs swelled,” he said.
“They were made to cook for their captors but forbidden from eating. They were held in tunnels in the dark.”
Doctors are braced for them to lose part of their vision. They developed skin conditions and hearing difficulties “after so long underground in cramped, squalid surroundings.”
“Medics have also been concerned that Hamas may have drugged them. This may explain why the four girls were seen smiling ecstatically as they were paraded in front of terrorists in their sickening handover ceremonies,” Mencer said.
“Those released in the November 2023 deals spoke of being given narcotics to make them appear happy. Doctors have carried out tests for toxins.”
However, the recently released girls, all Israel Defense Forces (IDF) surveillance soldiers—Gilboa, Karina Ariev, 20; Naama Levy, 20; and Liri Albag, 19—have told their families that they were determined not to be humiliated at the ceremony in Gaza City.
Given quasi-military uniforms to wear, they were required to walk across Palestinian Square and stand on the stage with armed Hamas terrorists at their side.
“We showed them on the stage that we were not fazed,” the Times of Israel reported one had told family and friends. “It had no impact on us. We are stronger than them.”
Eli Albag, Liri Albag’s father, told Israeli reporters the girls were told ahead of the ceremony that they would be required to speak from the stage.
Instead, he said, the four decided to make “victory gestures” and subvert the Hamas ceremony.
Liri told him, Eli Albag said, that Hamas “told them to speak. So Liri and the other girls decided, ‘We’re not only not going to speak. We’ll make victory gestures and spoil the whole show they have planned.”
The girls smiled and waved at the large crowd of armed Hamas terrorists and supporters. Albag also gave a thumbs-up.
“The moment they did the victory gestures,” the Hamas organizers “realized they'd got themselves into a mess with these girls, took them down from the stage, and didn’t let them speak,” Eli Albag said.
Liri Albag told her father she was to have said, “My name is Liri Albag and I’m No. 1,” he said.
Colonel Avi Banov, deputy chief of the IDF’s medical corps, told reporters online on Jan. 27 that some were held up to eight months straight in tunnels with little or no human contact.
“Some of them were alone through the entire time they were there,” he said. “Those who said they were together were in better shape.”
Some went for long periods without being able to shower and without sanitary conditions. Some were not allowed to hold hands together or cry.
Some of them reported hearing the radio frequently during captivity—some were held in Gaza civilians’ homes—and that they took strength from hearing about their families and others’ struggles on their behalf, including demonstrations urging their release.
The four, plus a fifth girl held with them and scheduled to be released later this week, Agam Berger, were soldiers in a surveillance unit based at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, one of the communities attacked on Oct. 7, 2023.
In their unit, 15 soldiers were killed at the base during the attack.
