The former hostages have experienced traumatic events. Medical staff are reaching their limits, especially when dealing with children.
Doctors are struggling to find a suitable treatment method for the children released from captivity. The massacre of October 7th and the subsequent abduction by Hamas was an unprecedented event, said Efrat Bron-Harlev, director of the Schneider Children's Hospital in Petach Tikva, to journalists in the Prime Minister's office on Monday.
The doctors had read everything they could about children who had been held captive, with or without their families. But that didn't help them in the current situation. Bron-Harlev herself personally greeted each child in the helicopter that was brought to her hospital after their captivity. "They looked like shadows of children, not like children."
"May I look out the window?"
On the first day, the boys and girls didn't speak at all, or only whispered. They asked very quietly, "May we look out the window?" or "May I open the door?" With tears in her eyes, the doctor responded to these questions: "It's your door, sweetheart. It's your bed. You may open any door."
The question "May I take a shower?" was also repeatedly asked. During their weeks-long captivity, the children either couldn't shower at all – or, "if they were lucky," with a bucket of cold water.
After 24 or even 48 hours, the children would smile for the first time. This smile gave the doctors great hope – that the former hostages, together with the medical staff, could overcome their horrific experiences. The smiles were followed by questions – and the stories of the young patients.
"I thought everyone had forgotten me."
Bron-Harlev gave the example of a girl. The 13-year-old said: “I really thought that everyone had forgotten me. Why did I think that? Because the Hamas kidnappers told me so.” The terrorists had told her that nobody cared about her, that nobody wanted her back.
“You can hear the bombs all around us. They just want to kill you and us together,” the hostage heard for 50 days. Now she has to learn to trust again, and that's not possible in a day or two: “First of all, she has to believe that we were looking for her. That her parents were looking for her. That we cared about her.”
The doctor said she herself had memories of childhood experiences from the age of three or four – both good and bad. The team at the Schneider Children's Hospital wanted to ensure that the memory of their captivity would make the released boys and girls better and stronger people, rather than ruining their lives. That, she said, was the most important goal of the therapy.
Bron-Harlev also addressed images showing hostages being reunited with their families. The child was smiling at the camera. "This is an apathetic child with a smile, with hope, with a future. But what these children have gone through is simply unimaginable."
Itai Pesach, director of the Safra Children's Hospital in Tel HaShomer near Tel Aviv, also spoke to the press. He felt the need to make the cries of the released children heard, he told the online newspaper "Times of Israel." "The world needs to know how evil and cruel Hamas's behavior is," he said. The accounts of the former hostages were difficult to bear.
Hostages drugged before release
Meanwhile, an uncle of 12-year-old Jagil and 16-year-old Or Ja'akov said the two brothers had been given sedatives before their release. Janiv Ja'akov made the statement on Monday at an event with Foreign Minister Eli Cohen (Likud) in North Macedonia.
His account was confirmed on Tuesday by an employee of the Israeli Ministry of Health. The head of the nutrition department, Ronit Endevelt, told the Knesset's health committee that the hostages were supposed to appear calm, cheerful, and euphoric. She mentioned clonazepam, known in Israel as Clonex. In other countries, the drug is marketed as Klonopin and Rivotril. It is used for the prevention and treatment of, among other things, anxiety disorders, seizures, psychoses, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The boys' uncle also said that terrorists had branded them with a motorcycle exhaust pipe after taking them hostage. Hamas wanted to be able to locate them using the burn mark on their legs if they tried to escape.
An aunt of 21-year-old Mia Schem, who was released on Thursday, spoke about her niece's experiences. Mia had been abducted from the Nova Music Festival and was apparently shot in the arm. A Palestinian veterinarian operated on her arm in the Gaza Strip. The niece then underwent physiotherapy on her own, said Vivian Hadar. (Israelnetz)
