Freed hostage speaks: 'They kidnapped me on a motorcycle, beat me, I went through horrors'

 

Yocheved Lifshitz, one of the women freed from Hamas captivity on Monday night, spoke for the first time with media.

Lifshitz, whose husband is still held captive in Gaza, remains hospitalized at Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv.

"My name is Yocheved Lifshitz, and I was born in 1983, in Israel," she began. "I thank you for coming to hear my tragedy and that of my friends."

"I went through horrors which we did not think, we did not know, that we would reach in such a situation. They went wild in the kibbutz, they kidnapped me, they laid me on the side of the motorcycle and drove on the plowed fields towards Gaza. During this time, they took my watch and my jewelry, and the shabab beat me with sticks. They blew up the fence, which they (Israel) built with two and a half billion shekel, and it didn't do anything."

"They raided our homes. There was no difference between elderly and youth, and they kidnapped them all. On the way, while I lay on the motorcycle, they hurt me a lot. They didn't break my ribs but it made it very hard for me to breathe."

Lifshitz's daughter then summarized her mother's words in English, adding, "There is a huge network of tunnels underneath, it looks like a spider web."

"When we arrived there, they first of all told us that they believe in the Quran and they will do us no harm, and we will receive the same conditions as they have," Yocheved continued. "We started walking in the tunnels, many kilometers, for a long time, and after two or three hours they separated five from Kibbutz Nir Oz and took them separately. They were next to us, watching us, a paramedic and a doctor of theirs also came."

She also said that she was taken, among a group of five hostages, and provided with medical treatment.

"We laid there on mattresses and we had a doctor on hand," she said. "They gave us medicines that we needed, or alternative medications."

"There was a boy with us who flew off the motorcycle and he had injuries to his hands, feet." She stressed that the group did receive medical care and the place was kept very clean, since, "At the end of the day, they were afraid of a plague."

"They divided us into groups by kibbutzes and residents. We ate what they ate: pitas, white cheese, and a cucumber were our meal for an entire day."

She also said that, "Hamas planned everything for a long time - they prepared everything necessary, including shampoo and hair conditioner. The lack of knowledge on the part of the IDF and Shin Bet really hurt us. We were the scapegoats of the government. The IDF did not take the balloons and field burnings seriously."