Freed Israeli hostage recounts ordeal in Gaza, where she says she was held in a hospital and civilian homes

Former Israeli hostage Ada Sagi, 75, who was kidnapped by the Hamas-allied Islamic Jihad group on October 7 last year, said she was held in civilian homes and a hospital in the city of Khan Younis and surroundings. Gaza before being released as part of a exchange of Palestinian prisoners in November 2023.

In an interview broadcast on Wednesday, Sagi told CBS News’ sister network BBC News that she was taken by two kidnappers on a motorbike from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz in Gaza on October 7th. She said she was forced to leave her shoes behind and her foot was badly burned by the bike’s exhaust. She said she was placed between her two captors on the motorcycle, one of whom had a Kalashnikov.

When they arrived in Gaza, she said she was put in a car and told by her captors that they were from Islamic Jihad, which, like Hamas, has long been designated a terrorist group by Israel and the US. Her captors wanted to keep her for use in a potential prisoner exchange. Sagi and another female hostage were taken to a family home where children lived, where they were given food and a doctor was taken to examine their burns, she said.

“Then we started hearing the bombs from the Israeli army. I was very scared, because I know the bombs on the other side, from Nir Oz, but on this side it was very scary. The whole house was shaking,” said Sagi. the BBC.

The next day, Sagi and the other hostage were moved from eastern Khan Younis to an apartment in the city center.

“You think it was arranged, the entire apartment, for hostages. The owner of the apartment and two guards[s] They were students who needed money. I heard it’s 70 shekels [about $19] for one day. It’s a lot of money in Gaza,” Sagi said. “From the beginning, the owner of the apartment said, ‘You’re like my mother. You are old and I take care of you. I didn’t believe it, but it was because he gave me the medicine for my foot. They tried to keep us in good health, but the foot wasn’t feeling well and I was very weak.”

Sagi said that on the 49th day of her captivity, she was taken to the southern city of Rafah for an expected prisoner exchange, but there was a delay, so she was taken back to a hospital in Khan Younis, where she was told that would spend the night.

She said there were “17 people from Nir Oz in various rooms” held by militants in the hospital.

“The people who are saying they are not[t] involved – they are involved. They are receiving money from Hamas. Our housekeeper is the same. He receives the money. And I ask him: ‘You say you are not Hamas, you are not [Islamic] Jihad. What? You take away my freedom and I’m here?'” She said the housekeeper responded: “‘I want to buy a visa for my children and my wife to leave Gaza.'”

“They do not have money. There is a lot of poverty there,” she told the BBC.

Sagi said the global reaction to the war between Israel and Hamas has made her “crazy.”

“Every time, in every war, anti-Semitism rears its head. But this time it’s worse,” Sagi said. “The world hates us and I don’t think they know the truth.”

Sagi said his community was destroyed.

“It was like the Holocaust, but in the Holocaust we didn’t have an army. You didn’t have Israel. Now, we have Israel,” she said.

Sagi said that for many years she taught Arabic in schools to promote peace in the region, but the time she spent as a hostage made her believe that the future she imagined was no longer possible.

“I understood that Hamas doesn’t want this. Furthermore, people who believe in peace are afraid of Hamas. There is no chance of doing anything with them,” she said. “Israel you have to make the dealwhat Biden and Bibi are saying, to stop the war, to bring back home all these hostages that are alive and that are dead.”