HAMAS Barbarism toward Hostages

https://www.thefp.com/p/the-woman-in-the-hamas-video-is-my-daughter?
The Woman in the Hamas Video Is My Daughter
There are 17 young females still being held hostage. One of them is my girl, Naama. And time is running out.
AYELET LEVY SHACHAR
DEC 8
GUEST POST
Naama Levy, 19, was captured on October 7 and last seen in a video released by Hamas. (Photo via X)
The Woman in the Hamas Video Is My Daughter
There are 17 young females still being held hostage. One of them is my girl, Naama. And time is running out.
By Ayelet Levy Shacha
December 8, 2023
You have seen the video of my daughter Naama Levy. Everyone has. You have seen her dragged by her long brown hair from the back of a Jeep at gunpoint, somewhere in Gaza, her gray sweatpants covered in blood. You may have perhaps noticed that her ankles are cut, that she’s barefoot and limping. She is seriously injured. She is frightened. And I, her mother, am helpless in these moments of horror.

On October 7, Naama had been sleeping at Kibbutz Nahal Oz, and was awakened by the chaotic sound of a missile barrage. At 7 a.m., she sent me a WhatsApp message: “We’re in the safe room. I’ve never heard anything like this.” That was the last I heard from her.

The next day, I saw the video, but the woman in the footage was so bloodied and disheveled it was hard to tell if it really was her. Naama’s father called and confirmed the terrible news.

Before that day, every video our family had taken of Naama was joyful—dancing with friends, laughing with her three siblings, and simply enjoying life. Naama is only 19, but she’ll always be my baby girl. A girl who truly believes in the good of all people. She enjoys athletics and dreams of a career in diplomacy, and her greatest passion is helping those in need. As a girl, she was a member of the “Hands of Peace” delegation, which brings together American, Israeli, and Palestinian youths to promote global social change.

But now, one video, totally unrepresentative of the life she had led until October 7, is how the world knows her.


It has been deeply disturbing to see the United Nations and feminist organizations refuse to acknowledge that Hamas raped and committed appalling sexual crimes against women, simply because the victims are Jewish. It took two months for some to finally admit the scale and the brutality of the horror. Meanwhile, Israeli experts are gathering the evidence. Shari, a volunteer worker at the Shura military morgue, told The Washington Post about what she documented: “We saw many women with bloody underwear, with broken bones, broken legs, broken pelvises.”

The same monsters who committed those crimes are holding my daughter hostage.

There are seventeen young women still in captivity. They range in age from 18 to 26. I think of what they, and my Naama, could be subjected to at every moment of the day. Each minute is an eternity in hell.

On Monday, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said that one of the reasons Hamas doesn’t want to release the young female hostages “is they don’t want these women to be able to talk about what happened to them during their time in custody.”

Everyone knows exactly what he means.

What would you do if your daughter were being held hostage by violent rapists and murderers for two months? Perhaps the better question is: What wouldn’t you do?

Over the last week and a half, dozens of hostages were released. The stories they’ve told about captivity are chilling. Emily Hand, a girl of only nine years, told her father she thought she had been held underground by Hamas for a year. Daniel Aloni was held along with her young daughter Emilia and was forced to participate in a hostage video in which she begged for their release. In it, she famously shrieked the word now, in Hebrew achshav. The way Daniel uttered that last word, now, that primal scream, is what lies in the hearts of every hostage, and every hostage family. It is the sound that rings in the depths of my soul every moment of every day.

In addition to being Naama Levy’s mother, I’m also a primary care doctor and the team physician for Israel’s women’s soccer team. I work with young women, and I understand the medical risks of spending every day in darkness, without enough nutrition or medical care or even basic hygiene. As a mother, I simply worry: Did my daughter’s captors give her a clean change of clothes, or is she still sitting in the same bloody sweatpants she was abducted in?

There’s a reason why women and children were prioritized first for release: younger women are at greater risk for further trauma. Just as women and girls are more vulnerable to more forms of violence, they are also more vulnerable to suffering from infections and pregnancy from sexual violence.

The longer Naama is held in captivity, the more violence she is subjected to, the more likely she will suffer the consequences of lifelong post-traumatic stress. When she is released, I pray that the image of her abduction, and the experience of what that image represents, isn’t how she comes to see the world.

Meanwhile, time is passing through an hourglass, and the sands are not infinite.

The seventeen female hostages are not bargaining chips to be debated by diplomats. They are daughters, and one of them is mine. My primal scream should be the scream of mothers everywhere. Bring her home now!


Ayelet Levy-Shachar is Naama’s mother. She is a primary care physician for families and for the Israeli women’s soccer team. She is a mother of four and lives in Ra’anana.

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Details of Hamas barbarism towards hostages begin to emerge
Dec 1, 2023 | News
Details of Hamas barbarism towards hostages begin to emerge
Details have begun to emerge of the atrocities inflicted by Hamas upon the released hostages.

A total of 110 hostages, seventy-eight of them Israeli women and children, have been released to date before the temporary ceasefire was broken by Hamas. Here are the accounts of two children; Emily, who was conditioned to whisper and calls Gaza ‘the box’, and Eitan, who was beaten by Gazan residents and forced to watch the massacre on video, and Ditza, who was neglected in an attic. Plus, details are emerging of women kept in cages and children branded with a mark so in case they escaped.

Emily Hand, 9

Among them is Emily Hand, the 9-year-old daughter of Thomas Hand who spoke at the Christian-led 19th November ‘Never Again is Now’ prayer rally in which he pleaded for his little girl’s release. Speaking this week to CNN, Thomas Hand explained how his daughter had been conditioned not to make any noise.

“The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was she was just whispering, you couldn’t hear her. I had to put my ear on her lips,” he said. “She’d been conditioned not to make any noise.”
He adds that Emily felt as though she was held captive for an entire year. “Apart from the whispering, that was a punch in the guts. A year.” He added that Emily now calls Gaza “the box.”

Emily was abducted while at a sleepover in Kibbutz Be’eri during the Hamas attack on 7th October, along with her friend Hila, 13, who has also been released.

Speaking to The Sun, Mr Hand said he will do “whatever it takes” to restore his daughter’s sense of safety and wellbeing.

“I can’t bear to think about what she’s been through – she’s been terrorised by terrorists in hell – but as her dad, it’s my job to make it better, and I will,” he said.

“It’s going to be a long road, but we’ll get there.”

Mr Hand had feared his daughter was being held in a labyrinth of tunnels nicknamed the “Gaza Metro” but Emily said that was not the case.

“They made her run from the Israeli army from house to house. She was constantly being moved – sometimes under fire – to stay one step ahead of the army,” Mr Hand added.

“She must have been absolutely terrified – an eight-year-old girl being led by strangers from one blown-up shell of a house to the next in the middle of a war zone.”

Mr Hand said his daughter had recounted Hamas gunmen were shouting “yala, yala, yala” in Arabic, which means “hurry, hurry, hurry”, at the hostages as they ran for their lives as Israel rained shells and gunfire down upon them.

“I said when she was being held that I was horrified by the thought of her spending her ninth birthday in the tunnels under Gaza,” he said.

“But the reality of what was happening to her was actually much worse – and I’m glad I didn’t know what she was going through at the time.”

Emily learned after her return that her “second mom” had been killed by Hamas. (Her mother died of cancer when she was two.)

“Last night she cried until her face was red and blotchy, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want any comfort, I guess she’s forgotten how to be comforted,” Hand said. “She went under the covers of the bed, the quilt, covered herself up and quietly cried.”

Mr Hand added that Emily remains in shock and is being evaluated by child trauma specialists in a hospital near Tel Aviv.

He said doctors have put her on a course of vitamins to boost her nervous system, and she is now “eating like a horse” after being deprived of food for more than seven weeks.

It follows similar accounts, for example, elderly women who were held hostage by Hamas and returned to Israel in the first two phases of the hostage deal experienced an average weight loss of 8 to 15 kilograms in captivity, the Health Ministry reported on Monday.
“I know now I’m going to become an overprotective dad and still can’t bear to let her out of my sight,” Mr Hand said.

“But the last thing I would ever want is for her to feel trapped or threatened in any way again.”

Eitan Yahalomi, 12

After the release of 12-year-old Eitan Yahalomi on Monday night, his aunt, Deborah Cohen, depicted the terrible treatment he experienced.

“I wanted to hope that he was treated well, but it turned out that he was not. I could not have expected to hear such descriptions,” she said.

She told French TV network BFM that Palestinian civilians beat him. “When he arrived in Gaza, all the residents, everyone, beat him. He is a 12-year-old child.”

She also described how any time a child cried “they threatened them with rifles to shut them up.”

The 12 year old boy was also forced to watch videos of Hamas committing atrocities on Oct 7th. “The Hamas terrorists forced him to watch films of the horrors, the kind that no one wants to see, they forced him to watch them.”

Ditza Hayman, 84

Ditza Hayman, 84, was kidnapped by Hamas from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Her son Gideon told Israeli Channel 12 about her neglect.

“The kidnappers took my mother to the attic of an unfinished building inside Gaza. She was hidden there completely alone, without other hostages and was trapped inside the building,” said Gideon.

“In the cold, without running water, electricity and with very little food. I will not go into detail about the hygiene that was there. Think about the worst possible—and then worse than that,” he said.

“Once or twice a day one of the kidnappers came to her, served her food and left. During all these days she did not receive any medical treatment, nor could she ask for it, because the kidnappers did not speak Hebrew or English,” he added.

Female hostages were kept in cages, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group set up in the wake of the attack, revealed on Monday.

Children were marked with a burn lest they escape, according to Yaniv Yaakov, the uncle of the brothers Or, 16, and Yagil, 12, who were freed on Nov. 27.

“Every child that Hamas took was taken on a motorcycle, and they took each child and put their leg in front of the exhaust pipe, which caused a burn to mark the children so that in case they ran away or fled, they could find them,” he said.

A Thai hostage who was released told Israel’s Channel 12 that the Jewish captives were beaten with electric cables and that Israeli hostages were treated worse than the others, he said.

These are just three of the Israeli hostages. The stories are just beginning to emerge.

CUFI calls for public inquiry into BBC anti-Israel bias
CUFI has called for an independent inquiry into BBC anti-Israel bias and demanded the release of the unpublished internal 2004 Balen Report into anti-Israel bias in their coverage.

The bias in the BBC’s coverage of the Israel-Hamas war is contributing to anti-Israel sentiment in the UK and this in turn has caused a spike in antisemitic incidents targeting British Jews. The BBC’s complicity in anti-Israel propaganda is also having an impact internationally, and as British public broadcaster they should be held to account.

Click here to read https://www.cufi.org.uk/news/cufi-calls-for-public-inquiry-into-bbc-anti-israel-bias/


Gaza surgeon used as pundit by BBC, Sky and CNN wept as he praised terror leader
A British-Palestinian surgeon used as a pundit by the BBC, Sky and CNN wept as he eulogised a founder of a terrorist group that later participated in the October 7 attacks, saying even after his death “the Israelis will still be afraid”, the JC can reveal. (Jewish Chronicle)
Read
Mordaunt suggests training for BBC staff amid concern over Israel-Hamas coverage
Commons Leader Penny Mordaunt said she hopes the broadcaster will “reflect on what has happened over the last few weeks” after a Conservative colleague claimed the “anti-Israel bile and bias is there for all to see”. (Jewish News)
Read
Hamas claims Jerusalem shooting attack in which 3 were killed, calls for ‘escalation’
Hamas claims responsibility for the shooting attack at the entrance to Jerusalem this morning, in which three Israelis were killed and six were wounded. (Times of Israel)
Read
Iranian school in London that sparked antisemitism fears served with closure notice
A north London Iranian school where children were filmed allegedly being encouraged to use antisemitic Islamist chants in the playground has been served with a closure notice. (Jewish News)
Read
Oct. 7 was just a rehearsal,’ warns Sinwar
Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter was “just a rehearsal,” the Islamist group’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar threatened on Thursday, in his first public statement since the terrorist organization massacred more than a thousand people in Israel. (JNS)
Read https://www.jns.org/oct-7-was-just-a-rehearsal-warns-sinwar/



https://www.jns.org/oct-7-was-just-a-rehearsal-warns-sinwar/
(November 30, 2023 / JNS)
Hamas’s Oct. 7 slaughter was “just a rehearsal,” the Islamist group’s leader in Gaza Yahya Sinwar threatened on Thursday, in his first public statement since the terrorist organization massacred more than a thousand people in Israel.

“The leaders of the occupation [Israel] should know, Oct. 7 was just a rehearsal,” stated Sinwar, according to the Maariv newspaper.

At least 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border. Another 240 men, women, children and soldiers were taken back to Gaza as hostages.

On Monday, Israeli media reported that Sinwar paid a visit to several of the hostages held in an underground tunnel in the Strip. One of the hostages released over the weekend said the terror mastermind spoke to them in Hebrew without an accent.

As Israel and Hamas agreed to extend their ceasefire-for-hostages agreement on Monday, Egypt reportedly put heavy pressure on Sinwar.

“Twice during the ceasefire the parties got into a crisis when Yahya Sinwar tried to violate the agreements, the first time last Saturday night,” said an Egyptian source with access to official circles in Cairo.

“Egyptian intelligence officers arrived at the Rafah Crossing [to Gaza] and conveyed to Sinwar extremely difficult messages and threats peppered with juicy curses. A short hour later … the Israeli hostages were released,” the source added.

On Oct. 14, Israel Defense Forces International Spokesperson Lt. Col. Richard Hecht told journalists that Sinwar and his entire command team “are in our sights.”

“Yahya Sinwar is the face of evil. He is the mastermind behind this, like [Osama] bin Laden was. He built his career on murdering Palestinians when he understood they were collaborators. That’s how he became known as the butcher of Khan Yunis [in southern Gaza],” said Hecht.

Sinwar was convicted on multiple murder counts by an Israeli court and sentenced to five life sentences, which he was supposed to serve until his death, but in October 2011 he was released from prison—having served only 22 years—as part of the Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange.

After his release, Sinwar gained power and popularity within Hamas, becoming its Gaza leader in February 2017 by defeating Ismail Haniyeh in an internal vote.