Video shows Israeli female soldiers captured by Hamas on Oct. 7
TEL AVIV — The families of five female Israeli soldiers taken hostage by Hamas on Oct. 7 released video footage of their loved ones’ first minutes of captivity, surrounded by gunmen in military fatigues barking orders and threatening them before finally shoving them into the vehicles to take them off to imprisonment in Gaza.
The families say they are seeking to remind the public of the brutality with which their family members were taken, in hopes that it would push Israeli leaders to restart negotiations for their release.
The body-cam footage was among the tens of thousands of hours of video generated on Oct. 7, when many of the 3,000 Hamas gunmen posted images and videos of the 1,200 men, women and children they killed and tortured, and the more than 250 others they took hostage.
The video, slightly over three minutes in length, is actually a series of clips provided to the Hostages Families Forum, an umbrella organization representing most of the hostage families, by the Israel Defense Forces. The video shows the young women first facing a wall in a room at the Nahal Oz outpost in southern Israel, bruised and bloodied and then sitting down. Gunmen shout questions at them.
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Naama Levy, 19, who participated in an Israeli-Palestinian peace project, turns to her captors, her face smeared in blood, and says, “I have friends in Palestine.”
Liri Albag asks if any of the gunmen speak English before one shouts at her, “I want you quiet, quiet!” Another then yells: “Our brothers died because of you. We will shoot you all.”
A voice can then be heard on the video saying, “Why don’t you speak Arabic, you cows?”
At one point, a Hamas gunman inspects the women and calls them سبايا , or “sabaya,” an archaic term that means female captives but can have sexual connotations. The video subtitles, which were provided by the IDF, incorrectly translated sabaya as “girls who can get pregnant.”
Another man says in English, “No, no, beautiful,” but it’s unclear what he means. The subtitles read, “You are so beautiful,” but that phrase is not audible in the video.
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In response to questions about the subtitles, the IDF said in a statement, “What was heard was what was translated.”
A brief clip shows the gunmen all praying while the women remain sitting against the wall. The video then cuts to a clip of the women being dragged outside amid the sound of gunshots and thrown into the back of vehicles.
Some of the women are clearly injured, their legs streaked with blood.
Shai Albag, Liri’s sister, said that the first time she saw the video, she did not recognize her sister’s face. “So much fear in her eyes,” she said.
Shai said the families made the joint decision to release the video to raise awareness that these women are “minute by minute, subject to harassment and rape and abuse, and that everything must be done to bring them home.”
“The Israeli government must not waste another moment,” said a statement by the Hostage Families Forum. “It must return to the negotiating table today.”
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The forum said the video released Wednesday was edited to exclude graphic imagery, including the dead bodies of soldiers that surrounded the five women, first in the bomb shelter in the Nahal Oz outpost where they were hiding before being discovered, and then in the room where they were sitting.
It was made public minutes before the war cabinet was scheduled to meet to discuss negotiations on a hostage deal. A statement by the Hostage Families Forum said that the families were planning to meet with several members of the war cabinet on Wednesday but that requests to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and two of his advisers have been refused.
Talks have stalled in recent weeks, after Hamas earlier this month announced it had agreed to a framework that Israeli officials said they had not yet seen or approved. At the same time, Israel’s war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip is trudging into its eighth month, with an expanding incursion into the southern city of Rafah and repeated raids across the north that have left the families of the remaining hostages fearing for their safety.
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The battle between the Hamas fighters and the dozens of Israeli soldiers at the Nahal Oz outpost has become a symbol of Israel’s security failures on Oct. 7.
Nahal Oz was one of a string of Israeli military bases along the border that housed special units of female soldiers known as “watchers,” who were responsible for analyzing videos of threats along the border but who were not trained in combat. An estimated 60 soldiers died in that battle, including 15 watchers.
In the weeks following Oct. 7, reports surfaced of watchers who had alerted their superiors to suspicious activity along the border, flagging the appearances of men in full military gear practicing taking over tanks and other maneuvers. Recordings of calls made by female soldiers later found to have been killed chronicled the overwhelming advance of the Hamas troops on the Israeli bases and toward the 22 surrounding communities.
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Seven female soldiers were abducted alive from Nahal Oz, including Ori Megadish, who was rescued by the Israel Defense Forces in an Oct. 30 operation, and Noa Marciano, whose body was retrieved in November from Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.
Most of the families of the other five have not received signs of life in months, if at all.
Ashley Waxman Bakshi, whose cousin Agam Berger is in the video, said the families decided to release the video now, as negotiations have become “frozen.” She said that Agam’s twin sister said she feels her presence most days but that the family struggles to remain optimistic.
“We have every reason to believe she is alive, but after seeing this terrible video, we also have every reason to believe that our biggest fears of sexual violence are happening,” she said.
Shai, Liri’s sister, said the family last heard about her after the cease-fire that fell apart on Nov. 30. From the hostages who were held alongside her, they learned that Liri had one request that she wanted to send to her family and to the outside world: “Don’t forget me.”
Hazem Balousha in Cairo contributed to this report.
clarification
This article has been revised to clarify that some of the video subtitles provided by the Israel Defense Forces were inaccurate or incomplete. The article now notes that the IDF’s translation of the Arabic word sabaya as “girls who can get pregnant” was incorrect and that its subtitles included a phrase that is not audible in the video. In addition, the article has been updated with the IDF’s response to The Post’s questions about the discrepancies.
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