Her 83-year-old husband, Oded, stays a hostage in Gaza.
Lifshitz, a member of Kibbutz Nir Oz., was once a number of the greater than 200 Israelis and foreigners seized after closely armed Hamas militants broke via Israel’s multibillion-dollar electrical border fence and fanned throughout southern Israel, overrunning just about two dozen communities, army bases and a wilderness rave. Greater than 1,400 folks died within the daylong killing rampage that adopted.
Israel’s army has introduced a devastating battle on Gaza so that you can weigh down Hamas and its airstrikes into Gaza after the Oct. 7 assault killed greater than 5,000 folks, in line with the Hamas-led Gaza Well being Ministry. Lifshitz’s captors hustled her onto a motorbike, got rid of her watch and jewellery and beat her with sticks, bruising her ribs and making it tricky to respire, she mentioned.
As soon as in Gaza, she walked a number of kilometers to a community of tunnels that she described as “taking a look like a spider internet.” She reached a big room the place 25 folks were taken however was once later separated right into a smaller workforce with 4 others.
The folks assigned to protect her “instructed us they’re individuals who consider within the Quran and wouldn’t harm us.”
Lifshitz mentioned captives had been handled neatly and gained hospital therapy, together with medicine. The guards stored prerequisites blank, she mentioned. Hostages got one meal an afternoon of cheese, cucumber and pita, she mentioned, including that her captors ate the similar.
Lifshitz and her husband had been peace activists who ceaselessly drove Palestinian sufferers from Gaza to obtain scientific remedy in Israeli hospitals. However in captivity, the hostages instructed their captors, “We don’t need to discuss politics,” she mentioned.
Lifshitz and Cooper had been the second one pair of hostages to be launched. On Friday, Hamas freed two Israeli American ladies from Evanston, Unwell. Israel’s govt has mentioned returning all hostages safely is a best precedence.
Israel overpassed warnings that one thing was once afoot forward of the assault, Lifshitz mentioned.
“We had been the scapegoat of the federal government,” she mentioned. “They [Hamas] warned us 3 weeks sooner than they taught us a lesson. An enormous crowd arrived on the street. They burned fields. They despatched incendiary balloons to burn the fields, and the military didn’t take it severely.”
