Freed hostages Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper were flown to Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv in a military helicopter following their release on Monday evening from captivity in the Gaza Strip by Hamas terrorists, accompanied by family members. Lifshitz, an 85-year-old woman from Kibbutz Nir Oz, spoke to the press on Tuesday morning about her harrowing ordeal. Yocheved’s husband Oded, 83, was also abducted and is still being held by Hamas. She did not see him while in Gaza as their captors divided them into small groups. “My name is Yocheved Lifshitz, I was born in Israel in 1938,” she began. “I thank you for coming to hear about my tragedy and that of my friends. I hope we will get through it.” “I went through a hell that we never imagined. They went on a rampage in the kibbutz. There was no difference to them whether they kidnapped the elderly or the young. They kidnapped everyone. They kidnapped me, laid me on the side of a motorcycle, with my head on one side and my legs on the other, and drove through the fields to Gaza. They destroyed the billion-and-a-half-dollar border fence. During that time, they took my watch and jewelry, and they beat me with sticks. It was extremely painful. My ribs were hurting me very much and I had a hard time breathing.” “When we arrived there, I was in a web of huge tunnels that looked like a spider web. They said they believed in the Quran and wouldn’t hurt us and we would be provided with the same conditions they had in the tunnels. They took a group of 25 hostages, and we started walking through tunnels on damp earth for many kilometers for a long time. After two to three hours, they separated five of us from Kibbutz Nir Oz and took us to a separate room.” “Their guards and a medic came with us and a doctor also arrived and made sure they provided us with the medications we needed. We slept on mattresses. There was humidity in the tunnels all the time. They were very cautious about our sanitary conditions so we won’t get sick. There was a doctor who came every two to three days who made sure to bring medication – if they didn’t have the same ones, they brought us the equivalent ones. There was a young hostage who flew off his motorcycle and had injured arms and legs – it was painful to see. The paramedic sat there all day – and treated him every hour, hour and a half. The doctor sent him antibiotics and it didn’t help. After a few days, they sent antibiotics again, and this time it helped.” “They divided us into groups by kibbutz and residents. We ate what they ate – pitas, white cheese, and cucumbers – it was our meal for the entire day. We were five people and each one had someone who guarded him. They made sure we had good conditions, they cleaned the bathrooms. They tried to talk to us, we told them – no politics. They were very friendly to us.” “They were planning this for a long time. They had everything there, even shampoo and hair conditioner. The lack of intelligence in the IDF and the […]