Shiri Albag is the mother of the recently-freed hostage Liri Albag. Her daughter suffered in captivity, but says that the “men had it [even] worse.” More on her long captivity, and her slow recuperation at home, and above all, her observations on those “innocent Gazan civilians,” can be found here: “‘The girls suffered, but men suffer more’: Shira Albag speaks about Liri’s time in captivity,” by Liam Dev and Maya Cohen, Jerusalem Post, February 13, 2025:
After 477 days of uncertainty, endless prayers, and relentless struggle, Shira Albag wakes up from a dream—only this time, it is not a nightmare. She is finally waking up next to her daughter, Liri.
“You know, waking up with your daughter after so long, feeling her presence—it’s overwhelming,” she says. “I keep telling myself, I’m in a dream.”
Liri Albag, the IDF lookout soldier kidnapped from the Nahal Oz outpost on October 7, has not returned to the life she once knew. She is no longer the same girl who enlisted a year and a half ago. Despite the smiles and reunions with friends, something in her has changed.
“Yes and no,” Shira says when asked if her daughter is starting to return to herself. “The moment I saw Liri and she shouted at us, ‘Liri Number 1’—our private joke at home—I thought, that’s my daughter. I was afraid of what I would get back, but it’s her. It’s my Liri.”
Yet for every joyful moment, there are silent ones—the realization that the road ahead is long.
“She’s grown up a lot,” Shira says, her voice heavy. “She understands so much, but she’s also very quiet at times. On one hand, she talks a lot, but on the other, it’s like everything is mixed together.”
It turns out Liri did not just survive—she found a way to navigate through hell.
“The moment she was taken, she realized her reality. She was now a hostage in Gaza, and she would learn to survive.”
Survival was not a choice; it was instinct.
“‘I’ll play their game, but I’ll outsmart them,’ she told me,” Shira recalls.
Liri learned Arabic, studied her captors’ psychology, and knew when to speak and when to stay silent. She did not resist, did not rebel—she survived….
And Liri Albag not only survived, but helped other Israelis to survive. Another hostage released earlier, Amit Soussana, described how Liri had saved her life, by convincing Soussana’s captors that she was not a soldier. Soldiers who were being held hostage received the cruelest treatment from Hamas; some — we don’t know how many — were executed..
When Shira remembers the day her daughter was taken, anger fills her voice.
“There’s so much anger about October 7,” she admits. “Not toward the soldiers who fought bravely, but toward the fact that no one was there who knew what to do. They sat there for hours—nearly four hours—watching their friends… some were still alive. If someone had come, they could have been saved.”
There was a terrible failure of Israeli intelligence leading up to the October 7 attacks. Signals that had been picked up by Israeli intelligence, about a possible large-scale cross-border operation by Hamas, were unaccountably ignored by the leaders of the IDF. In fact, two IDF commando companies were diverted to Judea and Samaria from the Gaza border just days before the onslaught. There were IDF lookouts, like 19-year-old Liri Albag, but only a handful of soldiers to guard the kibbutzim, and only private security guards to protect the party-goers at the Nova music festival.
They waited at the kibbutzim as 6,000 Hamas members, accompanied by hundreds of Gazan civilians eager to watch or even join in the fun, including the looting of Israeli homes, poured into Israel from Gaza for the IDF. But it took four hours before the IDF finally arrived, many hours too late. 1,200 Israelis had been subject to torture, rape, mutilation, before being murdered, and 251 Israelis had been taken back to Gaza as hostages where, like Liri Albag, they were subject to every sort of physical and mental torment.
It wasn’t just Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad who held Israelis captive. It was also those people we call “innocent civilians” who held some of the hostages captive in their homes. “The so-called uninvolved civilians” — including even their “little children” — took part in holding Israelis captive.
The most important message, repeated three times in this brief interview with Liri Albag’s mother, is that not just Hamas combatants, but all the people in Gaza, including children, are implicated in the holding of hostages. Some civilians kept the hostages, as domestic or sex slaves, in their homes. In Shira Albag’s estimation, there are no “innocent” Gazans; they all supported Hamas’ attack, and were delighted to learn of the atrocities inflicted by 6,000 Hamas operatives on October 7. These “innocent civilians” ran beside the motorcycles and flatbed trucks on which Israelis were carried back into Gaza, beating the terrified and often wounded men, women, and children. In every encounter with the hostages inside Gaza during the sixteen months of war, those “innocent civilians” exhibited the same cruelty as Hamas members.
That is why Shiri Albag says that “unfortunately, there are two million terrorists in Gaza. Two million. Liri was in their homes, and the children — yes, even the children — are part of this. It’s not just those carrying rifles and wearing green headbands. The so-called uninvolved civilians are not uninvolved at all. And, unfortunately, we’re going to have to fight them all.”
Billy says
Allah commands EVERY MUSLIM to perform jihad, religious war, against Israel, America, and ALL Non-Muslims as taught in the Quran. Deceitful Allah promises Heavenly Paradise to Muslims for acts of Muslim killing in terrorist attacks against Non-Muslims and Muslim hypocrites when Quran 9:111 says, “Surely Allah has purchased from the believers[Muslims] their souls and their money so that they may have the garden[Heavenly Paradise]. They engage in war for the sake of Allah, so they kill and are killed…”
Islam and its Muslims fund, promote, and practice bigotry, discrimination, deceit, supremacy, segregation, violence, and terrorism as taught in Islamic Law and in Islam’s Quran, and Muslim actions should be legally challenged with a multi-faceted force of Western Laws like Muslims wield against Americans and Westerners. Like a Foreign Terrorist Organization(FTO) designated by the USA Secretary of State, Islam is a MUSLIM TERRORIST ORGANIZATION(MTO) fighting against Non-Muslims and NOT A PEACEFUL religion under Western Law because Islam funds, teaches, and promotes a Terrorist, Criminal Organization with Muslims as Terrorists for Allah. Under Islamic Law, it is a Crime against Allah for Muslims to neglect performing Terrorism against Non-Muslims; Jihad means warfare against Non-Muslims to ESTABLISH THE RELIGION, ISLAM(Quran 9:29; Muslim Law Manual – “Reliance of the Traveller”, o9.0 and more). More specifically, Islam is a Muslim Terrorist Ideology and Murderous, Criminal Enterprise of intolerance, continuous war, discrimination, segregation, supremacy, genocide, polygamy, propaganda, deceit, hatred, incitement, sedition, rape, terrorism, and violence against all Non-Muslims as taught in the Quran(Quran 2:216; 4:89,95; 8:12,39,74; 9:5, 21, 29, 36, 41, 49, 88, 111, 123; 21:92; 49:15 and more).
Ken Olson says
Brilliant piece. Thank you for sharing clarity
Walter Sieruk says
It’s very good news that Liri Alnag has now been freed from those malice –filled Muslim terrorist of Hamas.
Likewisei,it’s also good news that some other young Israeli women who had been ruthlessly kidnapped by the jihadists of Hamas have been freed. Nevertheless, Hamas should pay compensation for the severe suffering and wicked abuse they, had to endure while in captivity, that inflected on them by the cruel jihadists of Hamas. Likewise, those jihadists of Hamas who had deliberately and maliciously inflected torture on them Those Muslim terrorists should be punished for their savage cruelty that they brutally and maliciously horrendously committed against those poor defenseless helpless women .For those Hamas jihad should not be allowed to go free with impunity.
Rob Porter says
Walter, are you nuts? Imagining that Hamas will pay “compensation” for its ghastly crime is delusional.
Once all the hostages are freed Israel must flatten every remaining standing structure in Gaza, leaving Gaza entirely flattened, inhabitable for rats and cockroaches, and then drive out all this vermin who revelled in Muslim savagery and Israeli misery.
Israel must tell there Europeans, especially the gutless French, to take their ideas and advice, and shove them ‘where the sun don’t shine’. That the French pansy men would get together with Arab Muslims to decide what Israel should do about Gaza while Muslims in France rape murder, have even decapitated French, tells us what useless lot are the French. We can bet that the French will allow the belligerent and stupid Muslims to decide their plan.
The Muslims responsible for all of this musty be killed, leave none alive.
Gandalfs Dewhirst says
Phew – but I agree.
Walter Sieruk says
Actually , I agree with you with you keyboarded that “Once all the hostages are freed Israel must flatten every remaining standing structure in Gaza, leaving Gaza entirely flattened, inhabitable for rats and cockroaches…”
Those last words rats and cockroaches.. that’s a rather a fitting way to the Muslim terrorists of Hamas Those terrorist Muslims of Hamas , with their underground tunnels, are, indeed, very comparable to mole rats.
Constance says
Likewise I agree ! Go to Iran next & let the People bring in their ruler, leave them fight amongst themselves.
Walter Sieruk says
This article should be a strong reminder that the jihad entity, Hamas, is completely evil and its miserly inflecting jihadists are totally wicked. Likewise .Hamas with it’s deadly charter , along with its malicious and vicious Muslim terrorists have proven beyond all doubt that is really is demonically evil.
So much so that Hamas terrorists are the mirror reflection of the most despicable horrific villains describe in the Bible.
Which reads “There feet are swift to shed blood; destruction and misery are in their ways; and the way of peace have they not known.” Romans 3:15-17, [K.J.V.]
Rob Porter says
Now I agree with you.
Walter Sieruk says
The severe malicious cruelty of the Muslim terrorists of Hamas in their treatment of their Jewish captives they had kidnapped is further exposed in the newspaper THE EPOCH TIMES Feb 12, A11, which revealed that the recently freed hostages suffered from hunger as they had been fed only two pieces of pita bread a day. Further to make things even more cruel, while starving the female hostages were forced to cook meals Hamas captors but forbidden to any of the food they had cooked.
Some of the kidnapped victims had been in had been isolated in small dark underground tunnel rooms with no human contact , at all, all the time that they were held as prisoners of Hamas.
One young woman when just freed still had a bullet in her leg. She received no medical treatment for that injury she had after being shot of a Hamas terrorist.
The list could go on about many horrific brutal ways in which the terrorists of Hamas treated the people they had ruthlessly kidnapped.
The point is Hamas is pure evil and likewise the Muslim terrorist are completely and totally evil . This is because the violent brutal cruel false religion that is Islam had infected their hearts and minds.
.
This exposes Islam to be a demonic religion of horrendous wickedness.
Rob Porter says
Adding to my thorough disgust for these Muslims, like others they claim to hate homosexuals and homosexuality, yet they took delight in sodomizing male hostages. After the 2012 Benghazi attack in which U.S. Ambassador Stevens was killed, it was found that his body had been sodomized. Why? Because these Muslims are such low-grade bits of filth that no filth or perversion is too low and degraded for them.
Walter Sieruk says
The major reason why those despicable Muslim terrorists of Hamas cruelly treated the hostages who they had kidnapped an held captive in so many unconscionably vicious ways is revealed in the Bible. Which informs its reader that there are some men who are so very callous heartless and malicious because they have had “their conscience seared with a hot iron.” First Timothy 4 ;2. [K.J.V.]
Cynthia says
They are 100% all monsters there. Those Palestinians and the others in Judea and Sumeria passed out candies, just like they celebrated 9/11. You can’t negotiate in good faith with psychopaths.
Rob Porter says
The whole lot must be driven out of Judea and Samaria. Arab Muslims have caused terrible misery for 1,400 years.
Peter Williamson says
So called “Palestinians” need to be removed from the Israeli territory named Gaza. Every single one. Dead or alive. There are no ‘innocents’ They are a deadly depraved killing machine deliberately created by the neighbouring Arab states and aided and abetted by the UN through UNWRA.
John Burns says
That is the bare,naked truth. Hoping for peace with Muslims – not just Islam – but with practicing Muslims is a flight of fancy.
Sister Alberti says
Every single one of the Gaza citizens needs to be tied down and deprogrammed with large doses of psyllocibin and psychological torture/reward training for a year. The males need to be castrated. It is perfectly understandable why no other country will take them.
Troybeam says
Smart girl, speaks the truth about the family members including children also involved against the Jewish people. Hamas is all the people of Gaza, must be understood and realized.