Greater than 15 months have handed since Ilana Gritzewsky was launched from Hamas captivity in Gaza. She nonetheless doesn’t be happy. Her companion stays a hostage.
He was captured together with Ms. Gritzewsky from their house in an Israeli border village on Oct. 7, 2023, in the course of the Hamas-led assault that ignited the battle in Gaza and is among the many hostages that Hamas continues to carry, greater than 500 days later.
Traumatized from her personal violent abduction, Ms. Gritzewsky, 31, has devoted herself to campaigning on behalf of the hostages nonetheless within the enclave, together with her companion, Matan Zangauker, now 25, and two males she stated she final noticed in a Hamas tunnel whereas in captivity.
They had been all kidnapped from the identical Israeli kibbutz, Nir Oz, close to the border with Gaza — among the many roughly 250 hostages taken that day. Now, about 24 dwelling hostages are nonetheless in Gaza, in response to the Israeli authorities, together with the stays of at the least 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 alone, she stated she handed out alongside the best way and awoke within the enclave surrounded by gunmen, half-naked, terrified and susceptible.
The hostages’ destiny has change into ever extra precarious, as Israel has returned to preventing in Gaza in a dangerous bid to strain Hamas into releasing extra captives, amid an deadlock in cease-fire talks.
Trepidation over their destiny has left Ms. Gritzewsky little time for self-healing.
“I’m probably not obtainable for my very own rehabilitation, not for the physique and never least for the soul,” she stated.
“I stay with the query of why me and never them. I’ve no reply,” she stated, including, “But when I’m out, it’s an indication that God wished me to lift my voice to assist those that are alive achieve their freedom and convey again the useless for a correct burial.”
Ms. Gritzewsky’s battle is on the coronary heart of a fraught debate inside Israeli society in regards to the nation’s priorities. She is backed by a broad part of society that desires to prioritize the hostages’ launch at any price, even when it means permitting Hamas to stay in energy in Gaza for now. However others — together with highly effective ministers within the right-wing authorities — need to defeat Hamas, even when it delays or prevents a deal to free the remaining hostages.
Mr. Zangauker’s mom, Einav Zangauker, has emerged as a outstanding voice in antigovernment protests staged by a number of the households of hostages. They’ve been annoyed by what they view because the Israeli authorities’s foot-dragging over negotiating the captives’ freedom.
Some former hostages and the households of many present ones have as an alternative pinned their hopes on the Trump administration. A number of not too long ago launched hostages flew to the US this month for conferences with President Trump and administration officers. They included Eli Sharabi, who got here again emaciated on Feb. 8 to search out his spouse and two daughters had been killed within the October 2023, assault, and Keith Siegel, an American Israeli, who was accompanied by his spouse, Aviva Siegel, who was kidnapped with him and freed in November 2023.
Ms. Gritzewsky not too long ago returned from a month in the US, the place she met with Trump administration 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 enterprise, she went to work in a medical hashish farm in Nir Oz, the place she met Mr. Zangauker. They grew to become a pair and moved in collectively. “We favored 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 home to accommodate till the assailants reached theirs, Ms. Gritzewsky stated. The couple jumped out of the window of their secure room as assailants shot on the door. They ran in several instructions and Ms. Gritzewsky overpassed Mr. Zangauker. Then her nightmare continued. She was shortly captured, overwhelmed and pushed to Gaza.
She stated she was trapped between two gunmen on a bike, her head and face lined with a big piece of nylon or tarpaulin. A house safety digital camera belonging to a Nir Oz resident, Eyal Barad, captured the second, exhibiting her with a white cloth wrapped round her head on the motorbike with the gunmen. Ms. Gritzewsky stated that the lads pressed her leg onto the exhaust pipe, burning it, and that one of many kidnappers sitting behind her groped her, touching her breast below her shirt, and her legs. She handed out earlier than they crossed the border.
When she got here to, she stated, she discovered herself on the ground in a dilapidated constructing, clearly in Gaza, her shirt up baring her breasts and pants pulled down, with seven gunmen standing over her. She doesn’t know what precisely occurred to her whereas she was handed out, however she stated she gestured to them and advised them in English that she had her interval, believing that most likely saved her from worse. “They hit me and lifted me up,” she stated.
“I felt they had been dissatisfied,” she stated, including, “I don’t assume I’ve ever been so grateful for my interval.”
Over greater than 50 days she was moved from place to position, principally aboveground, at first alone together with her captors after which held with different hostages. Although she advised her captors she suffered from a power digestive illness, she stated she was not supplied with any medicine. She stated she was held in non-public residences, in a hospital and, shortly earlier than her launch, in a tunnel.
Ms. Gritzewsky stated she was interrogated about her military service. (She accomplished her army obligation a decade in the past.) One among her captors hugged her and advised her, whereas pointing his pistol at her, that even when there was a deal, she wouldn’t be launched as a result of he wished to marry her and have her youngsters, she stated. She stated one advised her he was a arithmetic instructor, and one other, a lawyer. She stated they stole her earrings and a bracelet.
She understood that Mr. Zangauker had additionally been kidnapped to Gaza — when she described his lengthy hair to one in every of her captors, the captor appeared to substantiate that he was a hostage, referring to him as being from Ofakim, the Zangaukers’ hometown — however she by no means noticed him in captivity.
Ms. Gritzewsky was launched on Nov. 30, 2023, throughout a weeklong cease-fire when most of the different ladies and youngsters had been freed in change for Palestinian prisoners. On her return, she found she had a damaged hip. Avigail Poleg-Dvir, Ms. Gritzewsky’s therapist since her launch, stated Ms. Gritzewsky had shared together with her the principle particulars of her abduction and captivity: the violence when she was taken, the motorbike experience, the assault, waking up half-naked on the bottom and the intimidation she confronted in captivity. Ms. Gritzewsky stated she additionally associated the small print to Israeli police investigators. Hamas didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A United Nations report launched final 12 months discovered indicators that contributors within the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel dedicated sexual violence in a number of places and stated that some hostages held in Gaza had been subjected to rape and sexual torture. A U.N. fee 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, by which he begged Israel’s leaders to make a deal that might deliver him and the opposite hostages house.
Rights teams and worldwide legislation specialists say {that a} hostage video is, by definition, made below duress, and that the statements in it are often coerced. Israeli officers have referred to as previous Hamas movies a type of “psychological warfare,” and specialists say their manufacturing can represent a battle crime.
However to Ms. Gritzewsky, the video supplied proof that her companion was nonetheless alive.
“It wasn’t my Matan,” she stated. “He was skinny, with frightened eyes, screaming from inside to be saved. It broke me, however it additionally gave me hope,” she stated. “He survived.”