Yocheved Lifshitz He is 85 years old and until yesterday was on the list of hostages captured by Hamas militants. She had been kidnapped from the Nir Oz kibbutz “on a motorbike”, after the devastation caused by the militia – who had blown up the electronic fence costing 2.5 billion dollars – she had experienced a real “hell”. She was first taken to a forest and then taken to a tunnel in the Gaza Strip, where the jailers made no distinction between old and young. During her detention – she said at the Tel Aviv hospital – she had been “beaten with sticks” and she had had difficulty breathing. Once in the tunnels, an underground “spider web”, the hostages, as Lifshitz says, were forced to walk for several kilometers on damp ground. Once they reached their destination, the woman said that the Hamas militants had treated the hostages “kindly” and “had taken care of our needs”. She also “had told us ‘we believe in the Koran’ and ‘we will not harm you'”. According to her story, “there was a doctor who came every two or three days and brought the medicines we needed.” A prisoner who was seriously injured in a motorcycle accident was treated
War in the Middle East, Hamas frees two more hostages: the two elderly ladies escorted by armed militiamen
Lifshitz: «IDF and the Israeli government underestimated the threat»
Yocheved Lifshitz was released last night. Her “nightmare” is still shared by the over two hundred hostages in the hands of the Islamic Movement. Her husband Oded, 83, is still there in the Strip: both peace activists, for years they have helped sick Palestinians in Gaza receive treatment in Israel, transporting them from the Erez crossing to hospitals.
During a press conference, aided by her daughter Sharone’s translation from Hebrew into English, Lifshitz explained that the hostages were allowed to wash and eat, while her jewelry and watch were taken away. “They gave us pita bread, hard cheese, low-fat cream cheese and cucumber and that was our food for the whole day,” she said, explaining that “they slept on mattresses on the ground.” The group seemed “really prepared” and that the operation had been planned for a long time, she added. “The Israeli Defense Forces had not taken seriously” the threat that Hamas posed, he said, accusing the Israeli government of having spent billions to build a border fence but having done nothing to allow the militants to cross it.