Arbel Yehoud, an Israeli woman held hostage in Gaza for 482 days after being abducted on Oct. 7, 2023, revealed that she was sexually assaulted “almost every day in captivity” and attempted to take her own life three times during her ordeal.
Speaking in an interview with Israeli Channel 12‘s Ulpan Shishi (“Friday Studio”) news program, Yehoud, 30, described prolonged physical, psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of her captors in Gaza. She said she was held alone in extended isolation, starved and subjected to repeated mistreatment. During her captivity, she added, two of her ribs were broken.
“I tried to take my life several times. I felt that I couldn’t go on,” Yehoud said. The abuse, she stressed, was not a one-time incident but an almost daily reality throughout her 482 days in captivity.
Yehoud said she attempted suicide on three separate occasions. “There were moments when I thought that was the only way out,” she said.
She credited her partner, Ariel Cunio, who was abducted alongside her on Oct. 7 but later separated from her, with giving her the strength to survive. “Every time I remembered Ariel, it gave me the strength to keep breathing,” she said.
In the first months of their captivity, the couple managed to smuggle short love notes to each other through intermediaries, she recounted. That communication was stopped when their captors threatened that if Cunio mentioned her name again, she would be harmed. For more than a year, the two lived in complete uncertainty about each other’s fate.
Yehoud was released on Jan. 30, 2025, walking alone through a crowd surrounded by armed terrorists. “My mind was trying to understand—am I free? But still surrounded by them?” she recalled. Even at the moment of her release, she said, she feared being abducted again.
After 738 days in captivity, Cunio was also freed. The couple are now trying to rebuild their lives. Yehoud said they are coping with sleepless nights, flashbacks and trauma, but emphasized that their belief they would see each other again is what kept them alive throughout the long months of captivity.
Originally published by Israel Hayom.
