Held hostage in a tunnel under Gaza for nearly 500 days, Or Levy \u2013 starved of sunlight, unable to stand up straight, not knowing whether his wife was dead or alive \u2013 would often watch, hungry, as his Hamas captors ate the food he was denied. <\/p>\n
The captors ate \u201cchicken, meat \u2013 they had everything,\u201d while his brother and the others he was held alongside \u201cwere getting nothing,\u201d Michael said. The Hamas fighters \u201ceven laughed when they saw them looking\u201d at their meals, he added. <\/p>\n
After emerging from the tunnels as part of a ceasefire deal earlier this month, Israelis were shocked by the skeletal state of Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi. Gaunt and haggard, the appearance of the recently released detainees, as well as their testimonies, have raised fears about the wellbeing of those remaining in Gaza, as the first phase of the ceasefire nears its end and the next remains uncertain. <\/p>\n
Or, 33 on the day of his capture, was dancing with his wife, Einav, at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led gunmen poured over the border into southern Israel. Einav was killed in the rampage \u2013 something Or had long suspected, but did not know for sure until his release 16 months later. <\/p>\n
Over that time, Israel has laid waste to Gaza, in an offensive it said was aimed to free the remaining hostages and render Hamas incapable of governing the enclave or posing a military threat. Israel has been criticized by rights groups of stemming the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, leaving Palestinian children to die of starvation. United Nations experts also warned of famine in the strip, before the ceasefire deal helped get some aid to the 2.1 million people living there. <\/p>\n
Asked whether his brother may have been denied food because of shortages in Gaza, Michael said this did not explain why the Hamas captors ate well. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey were intentionally starved. It\u2019s as simple as that. The terrorists next to them ate all the time,\u201d he <\/strong>said, relating what his brother had told him about his time in the tunnels. Hamas laughed when the unfed hostages looked at their full meals. <\/p>\n Michael said the water his brother was given was rarely clean enough to drink, the tunnel was not tall enough for him to stand up in, and there was no natural light. \u201cThose are the most horrific conditions that you can imagine,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n The spokesman said Or Levy\u2019s was \u201ca special case due to special security circumstances, and we must look at the rest of the cases that were in excellent health despite the circumstances.\u201d <\/p>\n Also starved of news from the outside world, Or only learned of Einav\u2019s death after he was released. \u201cHe did not know. He assumed, and asked, and we told him,\u201d Levy\u2019s mother, Geula, told Israeli media. <\/p>\n While the couple were at the Nova festival, Einav\u2019s parents were caring for their son, Almog, who was two years old at the time. Michael said they wanted to reintroduce Almog to his father slowly \u2013 first a phone call, then a video one, before meeting face-to-face. <\/p>\n \u201cWe were worried that he might be scared, or he won\u2019t recognize him or something like this \u2013 but it was like they were never apart,\u201d Michael said. <\/p>\n Almog asked his dad what had taken him so long to come back. Or \u201cjust hugged him, he couldn\u2019t really respond to it. I mean, how can you respond to it?\u201d <\/p>\n Or Levy\u2019s ordeal was entwined with that of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American who became one of the most recognizable hostages held by Hamas. The two men hid with nearly 30 others in a bomb shelter on October 7, before Hamas gunmen began to lob grenades inside. <\/p>\n Goldberg-Polin, then 23, threw out the grenades one by one, before one detonated in his hand, blowing his arm off from the elbow down. Along with Levy and others, he was marched into a pickup truck and driven to Gaza. <\/p>\n Despite a high-profile campaign by his parents to free the hostages, Goldberg-Polin was murdered in August by his captors in Gaza, according to the Israreli military, which found his body shortly after he had been shot dead. <\/p>\n Michael Levy said his brother had a \u201cmeaningful\u201d conversation with Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin, Hersh\u2019s parents. \u201cHe wanted to tell them a few things that they probably didn\u2019t know about their son,\u201d he said, without going into detail. <\/p>\n The Goldberg-Polins launched a fresh appeal to US President Donald Trump\u2019s administration to hasten efforts to free the remaining hostages, saying they were spurred to do so after seeing the condition of Or Levy and the two others released with him. <\/p>\n Each weekend of hostage releases has become a grim propaganda exercise, with the freed Israelis paraded on stage and some presented with certificates and Hamas-branded gift bags. <\/p>\n The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is responsible for receiving the hostages from Hamas and handing them over to the Israeli military, has said it is \u201cincreasingly concerned about the conditions surrounding release operations\u201d and urged all parties to \u201censure that future releases are dignified and private.\u201d <\/p>\n The stage-managed releases have also been used to inflict further distress on some hostages themselves, as well as wider Israeli society. On Saturday, Hamas released a heavily edited propaganda video showing two unreleased hostages, Eviatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, watching the release of fellow Israelis from a vehicle \u2013 before being taken back into hiding. <\/p>\n David and Gilboa-Dalal, friends since they were infants, were also captured at the Nova festival. <\/p>\n \u201cThey look sick, terrified, pale, almost yellow. They were begging for us to save them,\u201d said Ilay David, Eviatar\u2019s brother, after watching the Hamas video. <\/p>\n Gal Gilboa-Dalal, Guy\u2019s brother, said for Hamas to show the hostages daylight for potentially the first time in 15 months, \u201cto make them see what freedom might look like for them, and then close the door and drag them back to hell \u2013 it\u2019s awful.\u201d <\/p>\n A recently freed female hostage said she was overwhelmed by the number of people who had gathered in Gaza to watch her release. <\/p>\n \u201cI knew there would be plenty of people, but I didn\u2019t expect that amount,\u201d Agam Berger, an Israeli soldier, told Israel\u2019s Kan Radio in her first interview since she was released. <\/p>\n Whilst in captivity, Berger said she was fed two meals a day, mostly made of rice, and that she would occasionally be allowed to watch the news, including Al Jazeera, and listen to Kan Radio, Israel\u2019s public broadcaster. <\/p>\n \u201cWe also had food and conditions that, for the most part, were okay \u2013 considering what it could have been,\u201d she said. \u201cIn that moment, you think, what is there not to be grateful for? But when you really think about it, these weren\u2019t human conditions.\u201d <\/p>\n Over the rounds of hostage releases, male captives have generally appeared more emaciated than the women, suggesting the men were worse fed. <\/p>\n Berger said that, on the day of her release, Hamas fighters \u201cliterally dressed me themselves to make sure I didn\u2019t take anything at all,\u201d making her leave behind sketchbooks she had filled with drawings, letters for her family and a prayer book. <\/p>\n She added that she was made to wear a hijab on the way to the handover venue, and that the militants forced her \u201cto record videos in the car, saying \u2018thank you\u2019 and all that nonsense.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/p>\n Held hostage in a tunnel under Gaza for nearly 500 days, Or Levy \u2013 starved of sunlight, unable to stand up straight, not knowing whether his wife was dead or alive \u2013 would often watch, hungry, as his Hamas captors ate the food he was denied. The captors ate \u201cchicken, meat \u2013 they had everything,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":9859,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9859"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/investingsstrategist.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}} Two different fates<\/h2>\n
\u2018Mental torture\u2019<\/h2>\n