Although it is clear that all of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza have. been subject to savage mistreatment, often chained and held in tunnels for almost their entire captivity, deliberately starved, and regularly beaten by their captors, it is only now, after the release of the three captives, Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami, and Eli Sharabi — all three so horrifyingly gaunt and skeletal — that media attention has finally been given to the monstrous cruelty that they, and all the other hostages, have experienced. More on this belated focus on how the hostages have been mistreated is presented here: “Hamas’s Torture Tactics Are Finally in the Spotlight,”
Now that Hamas’s abuse of Israeli hostages threatens to derail the cease-fire, the subject will get more attention. The hostages, especially those who were freed recently, have been concentrating on recovery. In the future, we expect to learn in much greater detail what happened to the captives in those tunnels and dungeons, but what we know already is troubling enough.
This week the attention is on Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami, and Eli Sharabi because their abuse was evident before they even said a word. But more information has come trickling out: they were, reportedly, burned with hot objects, hung upside down, kept in chains, at times gagged to the point of suffocation, starved and dehydrated.
It is not the first shocking testimony from ex-captives.
Amit Soussana was chained up in a child’s bedroom. After her captor let her bathe, he stripped her of her towel and sexually assaulted her, Soussana told the New York Times in March. Later, she was suspended in the space between two couches and beaten. According to recently released hostages, Soussana’s captors beat her at gunpoint viciously until another captive convinced the Hamasniks that they had mistaken her for an IDF officer.
According to other testimony, sexual assault of the captives was widespread. Hamas also apparently tortured a child with an item similar to a hot branding iron.
Physical abuse is common, according to the captives. Yarden Bibas and Ofer Calderon were beaten and kept in cages. Bibas was also subject to the psychological abuse Hamas takes special pleasure in doling out. His wife and two young children were also taken hostage. At one point, Bibas’s captors told him his family had been killed in an Israeli airstrike, and took a video of his anguish. Hamas has not confirmed the fate of Bibas’s wife and children, even after his release. They reportedly tormented Bibas about his family throughout his nearly 500-day captivity.
The hostages would often be told they were being freed when they weren’t. Gadi Mozes, an 80-year-old farmer released last month, was at one point kept in a hot pickup truck for 12 hours underneath a Red Cross building in Gaza. He hoped he was being processed for release, but it turned out he was just being moved to a new location.
During the initial Oct. 7 attacks, before taking Emily Damari captive, Hamas terrorists shot her dog. While she was comforting the dog as it lay dying, Hamas shot her in the hand, taking off two of her fingers, then dragged her to Gaza.
Another form of torture practiced by Hamas was to let serious injuries go untreated and force the captives to watch them deteriorate.
We knew what Hamas was capable of on October 7. 2023. That was the day when 6,000 Hamas operatives, along with hundreds of ordinary Gazans who accompanied them in order to join in the fun of watching Israelis be tortured and murdered, and also to engage in looting the Israelis’ homes, smashed into Israel, and proceeded to rape, torture, mutilate, and murder 1,200 Israelis and kidnap another 251. But as some hostages have been released, 105 in November 2023, and so far another 25 in a hostages-for-prisoners exchange in January and February of this year — we have learned much more about how the hostages have been treated. But the media has been reluctant, until now, to report on exactly what the hostages endured. The release of Levy, Sharabi, and Ben Ami has changed all that. Now the media has been much more willing to report on the details of the hostages’ mistreatment.
We know now, for example, that these three prisoners — Levy, Ben Ami, and Sharabi – spent most of their time in chains. They could neither stand nor sit, but had to lie on a cold floor. Both food and water were withheld from them food. At times they had to subsist on one-quarter of a single piece of pita. They were burned with hot irons; even a child was subject to such torture. This torture was not used to extract any information; it was simply fun to torment “the Yahudim,” the hated Jews. We know that rape of both male and female hostages routinely took place. Some of the hostages, we now know, were held in cages. They were allowed to take a shower once very six months. They were subject to intense mental torment, with some being told falsely that their families had been murdered on October 7, or assured that they were just about to be freed when they were many months away from any hostages-for-prisoners swap. Beatings were common and inflicted on whim. All of this has come out from the hostages released in the last month.
And now the media are no longer holding back. Those IDF soldiers who will be the last to be released — assuming that some of them are still alive, which is by no means certain — will have the most hair-raising tales to tell of any of the hostages. There is no end, we need to keep reminding the world, to the diabolical evil of Hamas.
somehistory says
there are no words yet coined to adequately describe their evil. The sons of demons, children of the devil, doing his desires, as Jesus said of His enemies.
The torture He endured was unspeakable.
The torture inflicted on these innocent people, young and old, has to be recorded so everyone will know that the ones doing satan’s desires, deserve the punishment coming to them.
James Lincoln says
somehistory says,
“there are no words yet coined to adequately describe their evil.”
Yes – no words.
Very hard to believe that some wretched demonic human beings can act this way – but they do.
Rob Porter says
James, I hope that once all the hostages are released Israel will drive all the miserable, low-life Palestinian Arabs as far south in Gaza as possible and then leave not one structure standing. Everything must be levelled and then for now left. No clearing away, no building and if any takes place bomb it.
All need for water and food must be left to Muslim countries with Israel and the U.S. supplying nothing. Israel must make life in Gaza so untenable that this Muslim trash is forced to go somewhere else.
Noting about this maltreatment of hostages surprises me because for years I’ve followed the savagery of Muslims in Nigeria, Somalia, Kenya, Mozambique, Iraq, Iran and Syria.
Bottom line, Islam is not a civilization, it is a demonic, pitifully stupid death cult.
somehistory says
thank you, James.
Walter Sieruk says
Such 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. So 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
Note even he rape of men, in effect sodomy – while Muslims claim to hate homosexuality. In fact Muslims as a group are so vile that anything is good enough to them.
Rob Porter says
The media, like Fox, needs to give full coverage to what these poor hostages endured so that Islam can be seen for the utter filth that it is.
Billy says
This the devilish nature of Islam, terrorism and violence, against Israelis and all Non-Muslims as taught in Islam’s Quran.
Like a Foreign Terrorist Organization(FTO) designated by the USA Secretary of State, Islam is a MUSLIM TERRORIST ORGANIZATION(MTO) to fight 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. 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; 4:95; 8:12,39,74; 9:5,29,41,49, 21:921; 88,111,123;21:92; 49:15 and more).
Non-Muslims CANNOT have peace with Islam and its Muslims because Islam and its murderous god, Allah, demand a continuous Muslim war, a religious duty, against unbelievers where Non-Muslims are CRIMINALS under Islam when Allah in Qur’an 8:39 says, “And engage in war with them[Non-Muslims] until there will not be sedition and the religion will be completely to Allah…” HENCE, NON-MUSLIMS MUST MAKE ISLAM, ITS MOSQUES, ITS SCHOOLS, ITS ORGANIZATIONS, ETC. ILLEGAL UNDER THE LAW. Similarly, Islam and its many Organizations must be identified and publicly declared to be MUSLIM TERRORIST ORGANIZATIONS(MTO) for their funding, teaching, and support of terrorism, violence, and discrimination against Non-Muslims(eg. Quran 9:5,29,111 and more).
The Istanbulian says
The Palestinians are lucky the Israelis aren’t like them
࿗Infidel࿘ says
Although if they were, they’d have been as reluctant to attack Israel as they are to attack Russia. Decades ago, in the 80s, when some Russians were taken hostage, the Soviets sent a threatening missive to the terror group in question, giving them some body parts of one of their prisoners. They got them back quickly, and most jihadist groups never messed w/ Russians ever since. Other than Chechens and ISIS
James Lincoln says
Infidel,
Yes, the methods that the Russians had used “worked”, but cannot be used by civilized governments.
Ade Fegan says
Islam to be held to account
djunk says
Strange have looked many places not yet found any condemnation from any Human rights organization about hostage taking and keeping; it is stealing and in western parlance an unlawful , punishable criminal act.Not a a sound,but for the poor “starving” thieves and murders.Has the “West” really lost, given away its moral compas
Alice says
What can one say except the Hamas is not human. Muslims in Gaza support 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.]
For those brutal and evil Muslims of Hamas , that “hot iron.” is Islam.
dumbledoresarmy says
There are two things that are happening in Israel, as the hostages are returned, that may have a good effect in the long run; because they have to do with an ongoing increase in clarity.
One of the returned female hostages has told her family that Hamas told the hostages that they would be forced to convert to Islam. A piece of information that requires to be spread far and wide, because it makes utter nonsense of the ‘liberation of poor little ‘palestine” shtick that has fooled so many western ‘progressives’. It exposes the fact (already obvious to any sensible person who’s taken the trouble to read a translation of Hamas’ charter) that Hamas – like every other jihad outfit worldwide! supported openly or covertly by the entire Mohammedan mob from which it has emerged – is on about … jihad conquest, naked Islamic imperialism. It aligns the actions of Hamas with the actions of, for example, Boko Haram in Nigeria, and bog-standard mohammedans in Islamic Egypt and Islamic Pakistan who have a habit of snatching minor girls, raping them, and force-‘converting’ them to Islam, proudly parading them as ‘converts’.
Every western ‘progressive’ – many of who are atheists who normally shudder at the concept of someone being forced to change their belief system at gunpoint -has to be confronted with the fact that Hamas threatened their Jewish captives with forced conversion to Islam.
And there is of course also the testimony – from the kidnapped, and from those who were not kidnapped but witnessed and survived the assault and massacre – of the ubiquitous howling of the ancient war-cry of Islam – Allahu Akbar – by the attackers. NOT ‘free palestine’. Not ‘liberate al aqsa’. Nope, it was ‘allahu-akbar’ all the way.
And the mother of at least one returned female hostage has stated explicitly the conclusion she has drawn from her daughter’s testimony about the active complicity of the average mohammedan denizen of Gaza, in the holding and mistreatment of hostages. She says that there are few genuine ‘innocents’ in Gaza; rather, there are ‘two million terrorists’, and children are among them.
How many *other* Israelis, as their family networks absorb the testimony of the hostages, are – finally! – getting a handle on their situation; that they are up against.. Jihad, Muslim imperialists waging a global war? (Quite a few Israelis already knew this.. but there were, alas, many who had – until October 7 – STILL not figured it out.)
Hank says
Western ‘progressives’ probably still don’t understand why you don’t import Islam/Muslims, by the millions, into your midst.