Israel’s first lady Michal Herzog made an impassioned plea on Friday for people across the globe to demand the release of the 120 hostages still held by Hamas in Gaza, especially the women and girls following testimony of sexual abuse suffered by some of them.
“At the nine-month mark since Hamas terrorists attacked Israel and abducted more than 200 people, among them life-loving young women snatched from a music festival, mothers taken from their beds, sisters and daughters ripped from the optimism and vitality of their youth and their lives, we must ask: What has happened to our humanity? Our capacity for empathy for the hostages as well as the innocent women and girls of Gaza? Our ethical intuition? Our sense of allegiance and responsibility to these women hostages?” wrote Herzog in an article published in Time.
“In the horrifying footage of their capture on Oct. 7, 2023, from the Nahal Oz base, 18- and 19-year-old girls are bound hand and foot and faced against the wall, passive objects in the hands of their captors. ‘You are so beautiful,’ leers one at a young woman, as he binds her hands, kneeling. ‘Here are the females,’ said another, invoking an ISIS idiom. The intimation is clear. And it touches every chord of horror available to the human experience,” wrote Herzog.
“The significance of this particular brand of violence against women—of the reported ongoing crimes against the female hostages in Gaza—is that the rule of law, so carefully put in place over centuries of progress, is being actively disregarded and defiled. This weaponizing of women’s bodies, this weaponizing of sexual assault and rape in warfare since Oct. 7, has taken the entire human race many steps backward. Civilization is failing these captives right now. And it is failing every one of us,” she added.
Herzog concluded by emphasizing, “I, along with millions of other women, haven’t given up. Not on these young women. And not on our humanity. I call upon every person to speak out for all the hostages—women and men—still being held by terrorists and help bring them home.”
Relatives of women held by Hamas in Gaza participated this week in a briefing on sexual violence and forced pregnancies.
“I have five children. They are all beautiful sunshine and light. I taught them to set boundaries and say when something is pleasant or unpleasant to them. I taught them to say, ‘This is my body, please don’t touch it,’” Meirav Leshem Gonen told journalists.
On Oct. 7, Leshem Gonen’s daughter Romi, 23, was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from the Supernova music festival as she tried to escape with three of her friends by car. She was the only survivor.
Dr. Einat Yehene, a clinical neuropsychologist and rehabilitation psychologist, participated in the briefing organized by MediaCentral, a Jerusalem-based media liaison service center, and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. Yehene serves as the head of rehabilitation in the forum’s health division.
“The trauma of captivity, coupled with sexual abuse, can have a profound and long-lasting impact on both the physical and psychological well-being of returning hostages. This may include symptoms of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, anxiety and depression,” she said.
Yehene went on to discuss the risks and the impact of pregnancy after captives return home. “The discovery of pregnancy upon return itself can be a deeply complex and emotionally charged situation that could lead to a range of emotions including shock, confusion, fear and conflicting emotions regarding the pregnancy itself,” she said.
“Pregnancy is visible, which can make returning hostages feel exposed and that their personal trauma is on public display without them having to disclose it, especially when coupled with the loss of anonymity in captivity,” she added.
