By TIA GOLDENBERG (Associated Press)
JERUSALEM (AP) — A 72-year-old Israeli lady held captive by Hamas militants for almost 50 days informed an Israeli TV channel Wednesday that she was held at size in a darkish, humid tunnel the place she met Hamas’ chief and helped go the time with a casual lecture collection by her educated fellow hostages.
Adina Moshe was taken captive from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a hard-hit communal farming village, on Oct. 7. She was freed in late November as a part of a deal that noticed roughly 100 hostages, largely ladies and kids, launched in alternate for a brief cease-fire and the discharge of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel.
Her account to Israeli Channel 12 TV comes as efforts are underway to convey a few new deal that might free the remaining 100 or so captives. It additionally sheds new mild on the troublesome situations that hostages endured whereas in captivity, the place Hamas chief Yehya Sinwar visited Moshe and a bunch of fellow hostages deep underground.
Hamas has been designated a terrorist group by the U.S., Canada, and European Union.
“Hello. How are you? Everything OK?” Moshe mentioned Sinwar informed them within the Hebrew he had realized throughout an extended incarceration in Israel. She mentioned the hostages bowed their heads and didn’t reply. Another go to adopted three weeks later, she mentioned.
Moshe mentioned Hamas raided the house she shared together with her husband, David, who was shot within the leg. They snatched her out from the window of her home’s protected room and one other fighter went again in to shoot her husband lifeless, she mentioned. Before being killed, he blew her a farewell kiss, she mentioned.
She was then taken into Gaza on a motorbike flanked by two armed fighters. She mentioned one in all them painfully ripped an earring from her ear and that earlier than he may swipe the opposite one she supplied it up. He took all her jewellery and a passerby stole her glasses, she mentioned.
Moshe and a bunch of different hostages have been marched into Hamas’ intensive tunnel community, strolling for 5 hours down 5 underground flights by way of darkish and airless shafts till they reached a subterranean room the place they have been informed they’d be launched within the coming days.
“We believed them. We believed that would be the first thing Israel would do,” she mentioned.
It ended up taking almost 50 till she was freed.
“I told all the guys, ‘We’ll be here for at least two months and not because of Hamas,’” she mentioned, indicating she harbored anger towards Israel for not securing her launch earlier.
Moshe spent her days with different hostages — males, ladies and kids — as armed guards stood by. They ate small parts of canned items and rice that dwindled with time, she mentioned. The room was lit solely by a small LED mild.
To go the time, she mentioned three male hostages, together with a Jewish historical past buff, a movie connoisseur and an Arabic speaker, supplied to offer lectures to the opposite captives. When the lectures concerning the Holocaust turned too laborious to listen to, they moved on to the persecution of Spanish Jews within the Middle Ages, one other subject too troublesome to course of underneath the situations. The three males are nonetheless in captivity.
Moshe, who speaks some Arabic, mentioned she requested the gunmen to decrease their rifles, saying they have been scaring a toddler captive, and so they agreed. She additionally requested to have the ability to stroll by way of the tunnel, saying her coronary heart situation required it, and so they additionally agreed to that. It was on a kind of walks that she found two male hostages held in cells as a result of, they mentioned, they’d fought again towards Hamas.
From so deep underground, she didn’t hear Israel’s huge bombardment. But she mentioned she may inform they have been taking place as a result of it felt just like the tunnels have been transferring.
Moshe was shaking and broke down in tears through the interview. She mentioned she is haunted by pictures of tunnels launched by the military the place she believes her fellow hostages have been taken.
“I have a feeling that some of them aren’t alive, because I know that they are no longer in the place where I was,” she mentioned. “They took them from there. I’ve seen the pictures.”
Source: www.bostonherald.com”