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Yocheved Lifshitz, the 85-year-old woman who was freed after being held hostage by Palestinian militants in Gaza for 17 days, described Tuesday being beaten as her captors took her away on a motorcycle.
Lifshitz said she was taken through a network of underground tunnels beneath Gaza that she compared to “a spider web.” She said she was treated relatively well afterward and offered the first public account to emerge from the more than 200 hostages estimated to be held by Hamas and other armed groups in Gaza.
“I went through hell,” Lifshitz told reporters the day after her release, sitting in a wheelchair in a Tel Aviv hospital amid a tangle of microphones.
She was freed along with Nurit Cooper, 79, on Monday and transferred from Hamas custody to Israeli forces through the International Committee of the Red Cross and Egypt. Her husbands are still held hostage in Gaza.
His account of the tunnels offered a glimpse into the difficulties Israel faces as it weighs whether and how to launch a ground invasion of Gaza to eliminate Hamas, which led the devastating Oct. 7 attack on Israel.
Hamas has built a labyrinth of underground passages in Gaza for its fighters, military analysts said, complicating both Israel’s anticipated ground operation and any attempt to rescue the hostages.
Ms. Lifshitz’s voice sometimes shook as she recalled her kidnapping and the horrors suffered by her neighbors when Hamas attacked their town of Kibbutz Nir Oz. Her daughter Sharone, who crouched next to her on Tuesday, occasionally translated for foreign journalists.
“Many people broke into our houses, beat people and some were kidnapped, like me,” Ms. Lifshitz said. “It didn’t make any difference, they kidnapped the old and the young.”
“I have these images in my memory all the time,” he added later.
She said her kidnappers put her on a motorcycle and hit her painfully in the ribs, making it difficult for her to breathe, and also took her watch. They walked away through the fields around Nir Oz.
They took her through the network of tunnels until they reached a large room where about 25 people were gathered, she said. After about two or three hours, five people were separated from her kibbutz and taken to her own room, where they were supervised by guards and a doctor, she said.
Ms. Lifshitz said she and others were relatively well cared for, with medication and the same food as their captors. Fearing disease, her captors worked to disinfect the area, she said, and doctors visited them sporadically to check on them. “They treated us kindly and met all of our needs,” she said.
Hamas has released four hostages, including Judith and Natalie Raanan, American-Israeli citizens who were freed last week. Ms. Lifshitz is the first freed hostage to speak publicly about her ordeal.
Lifshitz’s husband Oded, an Israeli journalist and peace activist, remains held captive by Hamas, according to Israeli authorities.
The Hamas-led attack on Israel’s border communities shocked and traumatized the country. Israel had fought repeated brief battles with Palestinian militants in Gaza in recent years, but nothing approaching the scale and brutality of the attack.
Ms. Lifshitz at times criticized the Israeli military, saying it and the Shin Bet national security service had ignored warning signs of the threat to cities near Gaza. The Israeli army chief of staff acknowledged after the attack that the army had failed in its mission to protect Israel’s citizens.
Weeks before the attack, Palestinians had rioted and fired explosive balloons near the Gaza border fence, setting fires in southern Israel, Lifshitz said.
The Israeli military “did not take this seriously,” he said.