Former Israeli hostages held in the Gaza Strip after the Hamas attack testified before a parliamentary committee on sexual violence on Tuesday about “abuse” during their captivity, saying they were treated like “puppets.”
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“I was there for 51 days and there was not a moment when we were not subjected to all sorts of abuse,” said Aviva Siegel, who was captured on October 7 at her home in Kfar Aza, southern Israel.
Ms Siegel was speaking during a parliamentary hearing on sexual violence by Palestinian fighters since the start of the war.
According to him, their captors “turned men and women into puppets (…) with whom they can do whatever they want, whenever they want.”
“I saw it with my own eyes. I didn't just see, I felt what these women experienced as if they were my daughters,” said the sixty-year-old. “Men experience the same things as women,” she added.
“The feeling is that we have been forgotten, that we have been abandoned,” said another former hostage, Chen Goldstein-Almog.
The two women were released thanks to a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that allowed the return of 105 hostages, including 80 Israelis, to Israel in exchange for the release of hundreds of Palestinian women and children held captive.
On October 7, the attackers kidnapped during the unprecedented attack by Hamas and its allies in Israel, which killed about 1,140 people, mostly civilians, in the Gaza Strip, including about 1,140 civilians, according to an AFP count based on official Israeli data.
According to Israeli authorities, there are still 132 hostages in Gaza. According to a report prepared by AFP based on Israeli data, 28 of them died without the bodies being returned.
According to an AFP count, 14 female hostages remain in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli officials have alleged that Hamas commandos committed rape, genital mutilation and pedophilic and necrophilic acts. Accusations that Hamas had denied.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reported in early December that released Israeli hostages had reported “cases of sexual abuse and brutal rape.”
According to the Hamas Health Ministry, Israel vowed to “destroy” Hamas, which has been in power in Gaza since 2007, and launched a massive military operation that killed 25,490 Palestinians, the vast majority women, children and teenagers.