Health Ministry: Hostages suffering severe malnutrition; Herzog: Crime against humanity
Group of October 7 victims’ families says emaciated condition of Eli Sharabi, Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami evokes Holocaust images * Ben Ami’s mom: ‘He looks like a skeleton’
The three hostages who were freed from Gaza on Saturday morning are suffering from “severe malnutrition” and lost significant body weight during their 491 days in captivity, the Health Ministry said on Saturday evening, after initial medical checks in the hours following their release.
“These are difficult scenes,” Health Ministry representative Dr. Hagar Mizrahi said at a press conference from Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, where two of the released hostages were beginning their recovery.
The three hostages freed by Hamas — Eli Sharabi, 52, Or Levy, 34, and Ohad Ben Ami, 56 — looked emaciated and unsteady on their feet as they were released by the terror group, 16 months after they were kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova music festival.
Still, Mizrahi added, doctors were also “excited to see them walking on their own two feet, upright and proud.”
President Isaac Herzog said the emaciated state of the hostages is “what a crime against humanity looks like,” as families of Hamas victims likened the gaunt men to images from the Holocaust, saying their condition underscored the urgency to complete the ceasefire and hostage release deal and secure the freedom of all the hostages.
Many family members, watching from Israel, burst into tears as the three were paraded by terrorists in central Gaza’s Deir el-Balah before being handed over to the Red Cross.
Herzog wrote on X that “the whole world must look directly at Ohad, Or, and Eli— returning after 491 days of hell, starved, emaciated and pained — being exploited in a cynical and cruel spectacle by vile murderers. We take solace in the fact that they are being returned alive to the arms of their loved ones.”
“Completing the hostage deal is a humanitarian, moral, and Jewish duty,” Herzog added.
Watching the release from the UK, Sharabi’s parents-in-law Gillian and Pete Brisley said they were thrilled that he was finally free but horrified at his physical condition. “He looks as though he’s been to Belsen,’’ Pete Brisley said, referring to the World War II concentration camp.
Michal Cohen, the mother of Ben Ami, said she was devastated to see her son look so thin and unwell. “He looks terrible. He is 57, but he looks ten years older. It is so sad for me to see him like this,” she said. “He looked like a skeleton.”
And Einav Zangauker, whose son Matan is held hostage and is not slated for release in the current first phase of the deal, said: “Today’s survivors looked like they’d emerged from concentration camps… The prime minister must end the war and get everybody back, today,” she pleaded.
Steffen Seibert, Germany’s ambassador to Israel, also expressed dismay. “Almost unbearable to see the emaciated hostages forced to give interviews to some Hamas ‘reporter,'” he wrote on X.
“Parading them like that is yet another terrible crime by the terrorists,” wrote Seibert. Ben Ami is a dual German-Israeli national.
Saturday’s release, the fifth of the hostage deal’s first phase, came as some hostage families fear the agreement would collapse before the second phase, leaving dozens in captivity.
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum urged the immediate release of the remainder of Israeli hostages after images emerged of the three men looking severely malnourished and frail.
“The horrifying images of Ohad, Eli, and Or reveal the devastating toll of 491 days in Hamas captivity,” the forum said. “These are men who have endured hell itself. This is a crime against humanity.
“These disturbing images show the entire world the desperate reality facing every hostage still held in Gaza. These images evoke the horrifying pictures from the liberation of the camps in 1945, the darkest chapter of our history. We have to get ALL OF THE HOSTAGES out of hell,” the forum statement said. “There can be no more delays – a second stage of the hostage deal must be implemented immediately.”
The October Council, representing families directly affected by the Hamas invasion and slaughter, said the pictures from Gaza “echo photographs of Holocaust survivors, and serve as a further reminder of the worst failure in the history of the state, and the need to investigate it fully.”
“Eli, Or and Ohad’s families also need answers,” the group said in a statement. “How was it that citizens were abducted from Israel to the Gaza Strip? Why did it take almost 500 days to get them back? And how can it be that, even now, living hostages are held in inhumane conditions in tunnels?”
The group repeated its demand for a state commission of inquiry into the failures of October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has so far resisted calls for a state commission of inquiry.
Returning captives confront tragedy
Two of the hostages returning on Saturday come back to ravaged families.
During the Hamas onslaught, terrorists murdered Sharabi’s wife Lianne, 48, and their two daughters, Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13. The terrorists had shot the family dog, then taken the family hostage in their safe room before setting fire to the house in Kibbutz Be’eri.
Sharabi, 52, is thought to have been unaware in captivity that his wife and daughters had been killed.
On Friday, Haaretz published an interview with his brother Sharon, who recounted telling Netanyahu that he was looking for a volunteer to tell Eli what had happened because he could not bear doing it.
Eli’s brother Yossi, 53, was visiting from Jerusalem and was kidnapped as well. Israel later confirmed his death, with the IDF saying it believed he was killed as the result of an Israeli military strike. His body is slated for return in the last phase of the deal.
Levy, 34, was snatched from a roadside bomb sheleter after attending the Re’im-area Nova music festival, while his wife Eynav, 32, was murdered.
Their 3-year-old son Almog has been looked after by relatives. It’s unclear if Or Levy was aware in captivity that his wife had been killed.
Ben Ami, 57, was also snatched from Kibbutz Be’eri. His wife Raz was also kidnapped and released in the November 2023 truce and hostage deal.
Seventy-three of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023, remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas has so far released 21 hostages — civilians, soldiers, and Thai nationals — during a ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued alive by troops, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli 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 body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014.
