The family of Kfir Bibas, the youngest hostage being held by Hamas in Gaza, marked “the saddest birthday in the world” this week as he turned one year old. Kilometres away Agam Goldstein-Almog, 17, freed during the November truce recounted the terror and fear she experienced inside Hamas tunnels.
Kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, the baby boy, Bibas, was only nine months old at the time of the attacks and was taken alongside his parents Yarden and Shiri, and his four-year-old brother Ariel. Throughout the more than three months of the Gaza war, Bibas’s face has gained global recognition, with approximately a quarter of his life spent in captivity by a terrorist organization.
Agam Goldstein-Almog spoke to US-based newspaper The Washington Post this week and highlighted how Hamas worked to dismantle her identity. The terrorists forbade her from crying, ordered her to recite Islamic prayers and renamed her Salsabil.
The terrorists warned her and said she cannot mourn her father and older sister, 20-year-old Yam, whom they shot dead in their family home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7.
Agam said they shifted her from one tunnel to another, kept her in abandoned apartments and at a school that worked also as a rocket launching site.
Agam’s 9- and 11-year-old brothers, who were also kidnapped along with her, were warned at gunpoint to not make noise and told them that if Israel knew where they were they would eliminate them.
Agam knew Hamas was lying. She was also aware that many Gazans and Hamas operatives were huddled around her and other hostages because then they would be safe.
“They knew it, too, that because of us they were safe. That’s why they congregated around us in big groups,” she was quoted as saying by the newspaper. She, her mother, Chen, and two brothers, Tal and Gal, were held hostage for over two months.
“They would be yelling at us, that this country is theirs. They said that their aim was to pray in Jerusalem. They told us that when they come back, they’ll come back bigger and stronger. They told us Hamas in Gaza is about 40,000 fighters, and that next time, all 40,000 will come, and not 3,000,” she further added.
She also recalled that she was wearing very little when she, her mother and her brothers were rounded up in a vehicle and taken to Gaza. She mentioned that they reminded her of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier who was captured by Hamas in 2006 and held for five years before being exchanged for over 1,000 Palestinian prisoners.
But the freed hostage was more concerned about more than 130 hostages still believed to be held captive in Gaza.
On Saturday night, at a Tel Aviv event, to commemorate the 100 days since October 7 and 100 days of captivity of the hostage, Agam addressed the 19 women still held in Gaza.
“Have you eaten enough today? Are you together, or have they separated you? Has he harmed you again? Has he asked you, again, if you’re married, if he could set you up with someone from Gaza? Has he entered your shower again, stripped the pyjamas that he gave you, touched the wound from the bullet that he shot, that really hurt you? But his control hurt more,” she said, addressing attendees.
Comments
0 comment