Freed Israeli hostage: Hamas kidnapping was 'hell'

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JERUSALEM — In a remarkable press conference held the day after her release from captivity, freed Israeli hostage Yocheved Lifshitz described her kidnapping by Hamas militants on Oct. 7 as "hell."

Speaking from a wheelchair at the hospital in Tel Aviv, Israel, where she is being treated, Lifshitz, 85, recounted her harrowing experience: tied up, thrown over a motorcycle, beaten with a wooden pole, her jewelry stolen as her captors drove her away from Nir Oz, the tiny kibbutz where she lived less than two miles from Israel's border with Gaza.

"I constantly have the images of what happened repeating in my mind," Lifshitz said.

Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper, 79, were released Monday after an agreement brokered by Egypt and Qatar. There was no indication of why the two women were chosen for release or what, if anything, Hamas received in return.

Nor was there word on the hostages that remain, including the two women's husbands. Israeli officials say there are still 220 hostages from the deadly Oct. 7 assault by Hamas on Israeli communities around Gaza.

Eventually, Lifshitz said, her captors escorted her through a "spiderweb" of underground tunnels to a large hall where she was kept for more than two weeks. Hamas provided food, medicine and a doctor to examine them regularly, she said.

"They schooled us with this terrible attack," she said, lamenting the fact that Hamas took Israeli security forces by surprise.

A video released Monday by Hamas showed the two women being greeted by the International Committee of the Red Cross, which transported them across Gaza's Rafah border with Egypt. In the video, Lifshitz can be seen reaching back out to shake the hand of a Hamas fighter as she says "shalom," the Hebrew word for "peace" that is used as a greeting and farewell.

On Tuesday, the Israel Defense Forces dropped leaflets on Gaza urging Palestinians to contact them with information about the hostages, and promising a financial reward along with "maximum effort in providing security for you and your home."

World leaders and humanitarian groups have called on Hamas to release the remaining hostages unconditionally. The U.S. has reportedly advised Israel to delay its much-expected ground invasion of Gaza in order to facilitate the release of the remaining hostages.

Israeli military officials say they have not paused their preparations and have emphasized their commitment to eliminating Hamas' military capabilities.

"We want to bring Hamas to the point of full dismantlement," Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi said in remarks Monday. "There are tactical, operative, strategic considerations that have provided additional time. And troops who have more time are better prepared, and that is what we are doing now."

In Gaza, more than 1 million Palestinians have heeded Israel's warning to evacuate the northern half of the territory and packed by the dozens into homes, schools and hotels — anywhere with walls and a roof — in the south.

But Israel has stepped up the pace of its attacks on the territory, including in the south's densely populated areas in Rafah and Khan Younis. More than 5,700 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed in the conflict, Palestinian officials say.

"We live just to live our lives and our dreams, and they killed our neighbors. They're targeting our neighborhood. It's a massacre," said Mahmoud Khuwaiter, 30, who is stranded in Gaza.

Despite the evacuation notices, Khuwaiter has not yet left Gaza City, because it is too difficult to move his 30-some family members, especially his elderly parents, who are in poor health, he told NPR in a voice memo.

Instead, he has stayed to see buildings in the area damaged and destroyed, including the apartment where he had been living for only one month as a newlywed with his new wife. The family's food supply has dwindled to some rice and some canned food — not enough to last through tomorrow, he said.

"I'm afraid for my family members to die in front of my eye. I'm afraid for the next day. I'm afraid for the night to come," he said. "All Gazan people think that we are dreaming and we need someone to wake us up, because it's unbelievable."

Fifty-seven truckloads of aid — mostly food, water and medical supplies — have entered Gaza over the past three days, a "drop in the ocean," according to the U.N. refugee agency.

UNRWA, the United Nations' humanitarian agency in Gaza, reports that it has fewer than 48 hours worth of fuel, and without more soon, it would be unable to distribute aid throughout the territory. Fuel is also needed for generators at bakeries, hospitals and water infrastructure, as Israel put Gaza under a near-total electricity blackout.

On Tuesday, French President Emmanuel Macron was in Jerusalem to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu before traveling to Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank to meet with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas.

Qatar, which has taken a lead in mediating negotiations between Israel, Hamas, the U.S. and other countries around the region, called Tuesday for an end to the war without embroiling others in the region into the conflict.

"We say to Israel: Enough is enough. It is not permissible to continue ignoring the reality of occupation, siege and settlement," Qatar's emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani wrote on the social media site X.

"We refuse to attack civilians from any party, regardless of their nationality, and we refuse to act as if the lives of Palestinian children do not count, as if they have no faces or names," he said.

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