Elizabeth Tsurkov says her Iraqi militia captors were ‘overjoyed’ on Oct. 7, laments suffering of hostages, Gaza’s people

Elizabeth Tsurkov, the Israeli-Russian researcher who was held for two years by a Shiite militia in Iraq and released last month, recounts her experience in Kataeb Hezbollah captivity on October 7, 2023, and laments the “horror” suffered by Gaza’s people.

“On this day two years ago, I was detained in my second prison at the Popular Mobilization Forces camp,” she writes in Arabic on X.

“The guards from ‘the Brigades’ turned up the volume on their television so I could hear the news from behind the walls about the October 7 operation. From the news I overheard from channels supportive of Iran’s axis, I thought the operation targeted only military sites because the broadcasters mentioned ‘prisoners’ (not ‘hostages’) and talked a lot about ‘soldiers.'”

She says that her captors were “overjoyed.” Tsurkov says she knew that a “catastrophe would befall Gaza and its people, though I could not imagine the scale of the violations and their horror.”

“May God grant relief to the people of Gaza and to the starving, injured, and exhausted hostages,” she writes. “All of them are paying a heavy price for the decisions of leaders who care about staying in power and are indifferent to their fate.”