Freed hostage says she was forced to read lines, pose with food for propaganda clips
Aviva Siegel, released in November deal, tells WSJ she refused to neaten her hair when captors gave her a brush and hair clip, was made to repeat lines she forgot
Released Hamas hostage Aviva Siegel on Saturday described the pressures of being forced to make propaganda videos for the terror group while being held in dire conditions in the Gaza Strip, including being coerced to repeat lines and pretend that adequate food was being given to her in captivity.
Siegel told The Wall Street Journal she struggled to remember the lines given by her captors as she was held with limited food and water inside tunnels where it was difficult to breathe. Her videos have not been released by the terror group.
“‘You didn’t say that you’re 62.’ ‘You didn’t say that you’re from Kfar Aza.’ ‘You didn’t say that Bibi needs to bring you back,’” Siegel recounted her captors telling her during filming, adding she would always forget what she needed to say.
Siegel, 62, was abducted along with her husband Keith from their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza by Hamas terrorists on October 7. She was released on November 26 as part of a temporary ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and the United States between Hamas and Israel. Keith is still being held hostage.
Hamas has issued several videos of hostages it is holding, in what Israel says is psychological warfare. Israeli authorities and human rights groups, and several freed hostages, have said that captives are coerced into making their remarks in such videos.
Israeli media outlets generally publish them only if their families request that they do so. Families have increasingly given their permission for the footage to be aired in an attempt to keep their struggle for their loved ones’ release in the public eye.
Siegel was forced to speak to cameras and her captors’ production crew three times during her 51 days in Gaza, the Journal reported.
“So I had to say it again and again and again,” she said.
On two occasions, the terrorists took footage of her eating, in an apparent attempt to portray her captors as adequately taking care of her.
“They used to make food and put it on the table,” she told The Journal. “We had to sit next to them and smile and say everything is okay, just for the picture.”
In one instance, terrorists gave Siegel a brush for her hair, which was full of knots after her time in captivity. Siegel told The Journal that she refused the brush as well as a hair clip given to her by the captor.
“I knew what I looked like. I was disgusting. I was so dirty,” she said. “I looked at him, and I picked my hair up, and I said, ‘beautiful,’” she added.
On October 7, thousands of gunmen led by the Palestinian terror group stormed Kfar Aza and other communities in southern Israel to kill nearly 1,200 people, mainly civilians, and take 251 hostages of all ages, while committing numerous atrocities and weaponizing sexual violence on a mass scale. Some 80 members of Kibbutz Kfar Aza were killed, and about 18 were taken hostage.
Gershon Baskin, a key negotiator in the deal that led to the release of IDF soldier Gilad Shalit from Hamas captivity in 2011, told the Journal that Hamas’s use of propaganda videos has been effective in “exploiting the public sentiment” in Israel, as tens of thousands rally weekly around the country in support of a deal to return the hostages.
According to Baskin, the videos have been edited professionally and demonstrated an understanding of Israeli society.
“Hamas wants this war to end, and this is how they think that pressure can be put on Netanyahu,” he told the Journal. “I think that they have an enormous impact on Israeli society, and that’s what they’re aiming to do.”
Baskin added that Israeli intelligence is also using the videos to determine the hostages’ health situation, “dissecting every single frame and picture to see how the hostages are being kept.”
It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
