Greater than 15 months have handed since Ilana Gritzewsky was once launched from Hamas captivity in Gaza. She nonetheless does no longer be at liberty. Her spouse stays a hostage.
He was once captured in conjunction with Ms. Gritzewsky from their house in an Israeli border village on Oct. 7, 2023, throughout the Hamas-led attack that ignited the war in Gaza and is without doubt one of the hostages that Hamas continues to carry, greater than 500 days later.
Traumatized from her personal violent abduction, Ms. Gritzewsky, 31, has faithful herself to campaigning on behalf of the hostages nonetheless within the enclave, together with her spouse, Matan Zangauker, now 25, and two males she stated she final noticed in a Hamas tunnel whilst in captivity.
They had been all abducted from the similar Israeli kibbutz, Nir Ounces, close to the border with Gaza — some of the more or less 250 hostages taken that day. Now, about 24 dwelling hostages are nonetheless in Gaza, in line with the Israeli govt, in conjunction with the stays of a minimum of 35 others who had been taken on that October day.
Ms. Gritzewsky stated that her captors beat her, then molested her, as they drove her to Gaza. Taken on my own, she stated she handed out alongside the way in which and woke up within the enclave surrounded through gunmen, half-naked, terrified and prone.
The hostages’ destiny has turn into ever extra precarious, as Israel has returned to fighting in Gaza in a dangerous bid to drive Hamas into freeing extra captives, amid an deadlock in cease-fire talks.
Trepidation over their destiny has left Ms. Gritzewsky little time for self-healing.
“I’m no longer truly to be had for my very own rehabilitation, no longer for the frame and no longer least for the soul,” she stated.
“I are living with the query of why me and no longer them. I don’t have any resolution,” she stated, including, “But when I’m out, it’s an indication that God sought after me to boost my voice to assist those that are alive achieve their freedom and produce again the useless for a right kind burial.”
Ms. Gritzewsky’s fight is on the middle of a fraught debate inside Israeli society concerning the nation’s priorities. She is sponsored through a large segment of society that desires to prioritize the hostages’ free up at any price, even supposing it approach permitting Hamas to remain in power in Gaza for now. However others — together with robust ministers within the right-wing govt — wish to defeat Hamas, even supposing it delays or prevents a deal to unfastened the rest hostages.
Mr. Zangauker’s mom, Einav Zangauker, has emerged as a prominent voice in antigovernment protests staged through one of the vital households of hostages. They have got been pissed off through what they view because the Israeli govt’s foot-dragging over negotiating the captives’ freedom.
Some former hostages and the households of many present ones have as a substitute pinned their hopes at the Trump management. A number of lately launched hostages flew to the US this month for conferences with President Trump and management officers. They integrated Eli Sharabi, who came back emaciated on Feb. 8 to seek out his spouse and two daughters were killed within the October 2023, assault, and Keith Siegel, an American Israeli, who was once accompanied through his spouse, Aviva Siegel, who was once abducted with him and freed in November 2023.
Ms. Gritzewsky lately returned from a month in the US, the place she met with Trump management officers and Jewish communities, attended the Conservative Political Motion Convention and addressed a rally for the hostages in Central Park.
Ms. Gritzewsky immigrated to Israel from Mexico in her teenagers. After beginning a confectionary industry, she went to paintings in a scientific hashish farm in Nir Ounces, the place she met Mr. Zangauker. They was a pair and moved in in combination. “We preferred the quiet of the kibbutz, with our cup of espresso and cigarette,” she stated. “We want anonymity.”
When gunmen overran Nir Oz early that October morning, they went from area to accommodate till the assailants reached theirs, Ms. Gritzewsky stated. The couple jumped out of the window in their secure room as assailants shot on the door. They ran in several instructions and Ms. Gritzewsky overlooked Mr. Zangauker. Then her nightmare endured. She was once briefly captured, crushed and pushed to Gaza.
She stated she was once trapped between two gunmen on a motorbike, her head and face coated with a big piece of nylon or tarpaulin. A house safety digicam belonging to a Nir Ounces resident, Eyal Barad, captured the instant, appearing her with a white cloth wrapped round her head at the bike with the gunmen. Ms. Gritzewsky stated that the lads pressed her leg onto the exhaust pipe, burning it, and that one of the vital kidnappers sitting at the back of her groped her, touching her breast beneath her blouse, and her legs. She handed out ahead of they crossed the border.
When she got here to, she stated, she discovered herself at the ground in a dilapidated development, obviously in Gaza, her blouse up baring her breasts and pants pulled down, with seven gunmen status over her. She does no longer know what precisely came about to her whilst she was once handed out, however she stated she gestured to them and instructed them in English that she had her duration, believing that almost certainly stored her from worse. “They hit me and lifted me up,” she stated.
“I felt they had been disenchanted,” she stated, including, “I don’t assume I’ve ever been so grateful for my duration.”
Over greater than 50 days she was once moved from position to position, most commonly aboveground, in the beginning on my own along with her captors after which held with different hostages. Although she instructed her captors she suffered from a prolonged digestive illness, she stated she was once no longer supplied with any drugs. She stated she was once held in non-public flats, in a health center and, in a while ahead of her free up, in a tunnel.
Ms. Gritzewsky stated she was once interrogated about her military provider. (She finished her army accountability a decade in the past.) One in all her captors hugged her and instructed her, whilst pointing his pistol at her, that even supposing there was once a deal, she would no longer be launched as a result of he sought after to marry her and feature her kids, she stated. She stated one instructed her he was once a arithmetic instructor, and any other, a legal professional. She stated they stole her earrings and a bracelet.
She understood that Mr. Zangauker had additionally been abducted to Gaza — when she described his lengthy hair to one in every of her captors, the captor gave the impression to ascertain that he was once a hostage, regarding him as being from Ofakim, the Zangaukers’ native land — however she by no means noticed him in captivity.
Ms. Gritzewsky was once launched on Nov. 30, 2023, throughout a weeklong cease-fire when lots of the different girls and youngsters had been freed in change for Palestinian prisoners. On her go back, she came upon she had a damaged hip. Avigail Poleg-Dvir, Ms. Gritzewsky’s therapist since her free up, stated Ms. Gritzewsky had shared along with her the principle main points of her abduction and captivity: the violence when she was once taken, the bike trip, the attack, waking up half-naked at the floor and the intimidation she confronted in captivity. Ms. Gritzewsky stated she additionally comparable the main points to Israeli police investigators. Hamas didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A United International locations report released last year discovered indicators that members within the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel dedicated sexual violence in a couple of places and stated that some hostages held in Gaza were subjected to rape and sexual torture. A U.N. commission additionally accused Israel of sexual- and gender-based violence throughout its marketing campaign in Gaza, together with torture, abuse and sexual humiliation.
In December 2024, Hamas launched a video of Mr. Zangauker in captivity, during which he begged Israel’s leaders to make a deal that will carry him and the opposite hostages house.
Rights groups and global regulation mavens say {that a} hostage video is, through definition, made beneath duress, and that the statements in it are in most cases coerced. Israeli officers have known as previous Hamas movies a type of “mental war,” and mavens say their manufacturing can represent a conflict crime.
However to Ms. Gritzewsky, the video equipped evidence that her spouse was once nonetheless alive.
“It wasn’t my Matan,” she stated. “He was once skinny, with nervous eyes, screaming from inside to be stored. It broke me, nevertheless it additionally gave me hope,” she stated. “He survived.”
