International journalist
While Hamas kept hostage for 15 months in Gaza, 80-year-old Gadi Moses ate mostly a piece of bread and olive twice a day, says his niece Ephrat Machikawa.
“I have no idea how he survived,” says the BBC. “He lost so much pounds.”
They gave him a small bowl of water to wash every five days and had to ask him to use the toilet, she said. He often moved and was mostly alone, and Mrs. Machikawa said “loneliness is another form of torture.”
He calculated mathematical problems in his head to distract and walk up to 11 km (six miles) daily in the room, measuring the distance, she added.
“Even in the darkest times, he knew how to get up somehow,” she said. “The hope that he would reunite with his family and take care of us was the greatest force, was the only diet he had for his soul.”
Gadi was one of 18 hostages published this year as part of an agreement on a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, in exchange for 583 Palestinian prisoners.
The secondary fire aims to end the 15 months of war in Gaza after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 as hostages.
The Israeli military campaign in the response was killed by more than 47,000 people in Gaza, according to the HAMAS Ministry of Health, whose UN figures considered reliable.
Now, as hostages are coming back from more than a year in captivity, details of their conditions appear. Accounts of limited food, without fresh vegetables, are similar to the conditions Gazani reported during the war.
Two former hostages members said the BBC that Tanja had returned.
“We are all very, very excited that Keith returned home, but very worried when we saw the state he brought us back to us,” Tal Wax, niece of 65-year-old American-Israeli hostage Keith Siegel, which was published on Saturday, said .
“Although we see that he is able to walk and talk, we see that he has lost a lot of weight,” she said.
She heard from her relatives and wife, Mr. Siegel Aviv, that “he had to withstand a lot of horrific situations in captivity, while still the good person he was.”
It’s still vegan, she added.
“Keith is very humane and he wanted to tell us that he was still the same person … even after all he had gone through … still lives to his beliefs,” she said.
“This is just the beginning of his rehab. We have a long way ahead.”
Mrs. Machikawa said that even letting uncle’s “scary” experience.
As the crowds surrounded him in Gaza on Thursday, he thought it was “the end of his life,” she said.
After returning to Israel, she could sleep for five hours for the first time since his capture.
“I feel like my tension is slowly melting,” she said.
On Friday, she ran to embrace her uncle in the hospital, where he gave her a “strongest, strongest hug”, and she let “Crack a tear of relief and love.”
“We understand that the uncle we know the same as we know, but even bigger,” she said, as he spoke of rehabilitation and strong, and dreamed of returning to his fields, where he is an agricultural expert.
“Unity and family and devoting themselves to justice and right cause are bigger than anything, because I stopped my life on October 7th,” she said.
She thanked Katar and the US for mediated by the agreement and the “brave” Red Cross workers who made it easier to issue.
“Joy is amazing,” she said, but she has mixed feelings until every hostage is back. She said that “we need to eradicate terror” and “Israel must secure its borders and work for a better neighborhood and the region.”
“We will always strive to be better, to be like bastards, to be the one who connects even the worst times and to reach out for a chance for a better life with everyone around us.”
Few hostages released so far this year has been publicly talking about their experiences.
On Saturday, Doron Steinbrecher, who was released two weeks ago, posted a video.
“It will take time and that’s the procedure – it won’t end in a week or two, but I’m here thanks to you and I’m fine,” she said.
“I understand that everyone knows me from that terrible recording” they caught me, they caught me, they caught me “or as a blond girl in a pink,” she said. “But I’m no longer a blonde and I’m not going to wear pink anymore. I’m Doron, 31 years old. I’m no longer a Hamas prisoner, and at home.”
Families with loved ones still in captivity, “you’re not alone” and “we still fight for you,” she added.
This includes the Bibas family, who welcomed Back Yarden on Saturday, but not his wife Shiri, and two small sons, Ariel and Kfir, who were also taken hostage.
Hamas said earlier that they were killed in the Israeli air strike at the beginning of the war – but they were named in List of hostages In January, it was said that he was ready to free himself.
“A quarter of our heart has returned to us after 15 long months,” Bibas family said in a statement. “Yarden returned home, but the home remains incomplete.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog said his country was “deeply worried” for their destiny.
Another 15 hostages and about 1300 Palestinian prisoners should still be released in the first six weeks of the truce, which began on January 19th.
