Jerusalem —
A 72-year-old Israeli woman who had been detained for almost 50 days by Hamas militants revealed to an Israeli TV channel on Wednesday that she had spent much of her time in a dank, dark tunnel where she had met a Hamas leader and been entertained by her more experienced captors with informal lectures.
On October 7, Adina Moshe was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz, a severely damaged communal farming village. She was released in late November as part of an agreement that saw the release of about 100 hostages, the majority of whom were women and children, in exchange for a short-term cease-fire and the release of Israeli-incarcerated Palestinians.
Her statement to Israeli Channel 12 TV coincides with attempts to broker a new agreement that might result in the release of the roughly 100 prisoners still held captive. She added that it throws fresh light on the harsh circumstances under which hostages lived while held captive by Hamas, with Yehya Sinwar, the organization’s chief representative in Gaza, paying Moshe and a group of other captives a visit deep underground.
“Hi there. What’s up with you? Everything Alright?” Moshe stated Sinwar spoke to them in Hebrew, which he had picked up during a protracted detention in Israel. The hostages, according to her, bowed their heads and remained silent. Three weeks later, she said, there was another visit.
Moshe claimed that militants broke into the house she and her husband, David, were living in. David was shot in the leg. She claimed that after they grabbed her out of the safe room window of her home, a second militant returned to kill her husband. She said he blew her a farewell kiss before he was killed.
Then, she was driven into Gaza on a motorcycle with two armed militants on either side of her. She claimed that after one of them anguishedly tore an earring out of her ear, she offered up the other one before he could take it. She claimed a passerby had stolen her glasses and he had taken all of her jewelry.
After being marched into Hamas’ vast network of tunnels, Moshe and the other captives had to walk five hours down five underground flights through pitch-black, airless shafts until they arrived at a subterranean room where they were informed they would be freed in the next few days.
“We gave them credence. We thought Israel would act on that first,” the woman remarked.
Ultimately, it took almost fifty to set her free.
She made it clear that she was upset with Israel for not getting her released sooner when she said, “I told all the guys, ‘We’ll be here for at least two months and not because of Hamas.'”
Armed guards watched over Moshe and the other hostages, who included men, women, and children. Gradually, she said, their portions of rice and canned goods shrank. There was only one tiny LED light in the room.
She said that three male captives, an expert on Jewish history, a movie buff, and an Arabic speaker, offered to lecture the other prisoners as a way to kill time. The lectures on the Holocaust eventually became too painful to listen to, so they moved on to another difficult subject for the circumstances—the persecution of Spanish Jews in the Middle Ages. The trio of men remains incarcerated.
Speaking a little Arabic, Moshe said she asked the gunmen to put down their rifles because she thought they were frightening a young captive. They complied. They also granted her request to be able to walk through the tunnel, citing her heart condition as justification. During one of those walks, she came upon two male hostages who were being held captive in cells as a result of their alleged resistance against the militants.
She was so far underground that she was oblivious to Israel’s heavy artillery barrage. However, she claimed that the sensation of the tunnels moving allowed her to identify their existence.
Moshe sobbed during the interview and was trembling. She claimed that visions of the army-released tunnels, where she thinks her fellow hostages have been abducted, haunt her.
She remarked, “I know that some of them are no longer where I was, so I have a feeling that some of them aren’t alive.” “From there, they were taken.” I’ve viewed the images.