Gadi Mozes ‘recovering very quickly’ despite harsh conditions in captivity, niece says

Efrat Machikawa, niece of released hostage Gadi Mozes, speaks to journalists about her nearly 81-year-old uncle who was freed from Hamas captivity on Thursday.

“He is recovering, very quickly,” says Machikawa, adding that Mozes was “very, very scared” while being transferred in the midst of a mob in Gaza to the UN vehicle. “He was holding up for so long and was just terrified.”

Machikawa says her uncle knew some of what had happened during his 15 months of captivity.

He managed to hear and see bits of media broadcasts, and would be told by his Islamic Jihad captors when Machikawa was talking about him to the press, as they recognized her by the long earrings she always wears.

“He put all the bits together,” she says. “He understood things, but not totally.”

Mozes said they referred to him as “the old man” in Arabic. His age made it tough to sleep on the floor. He was kept in closed rooms where he would pace and count his steps, walking 3-10 kilometers each day.

He had little human interaction for most of the time he was kept captive.

“He kept himself on the move,” she says, adding that he also pushed himself intellectually, reading the same book in English over and over.

He had very little nutrition in the little food he was given, and lost a lot of weight, but “is somehow okay,” says Machikawa.

Mozes knew that his partner, Efrat Katz, had been killed in the October 7, 2023, assault. Her daughter, Doron, who was taken hostage with her two young children and then released in November 2023, is now pregnant and about to give birth.

Machikawa emphasized her uncle’s overall mental state.

“The first time he hugged me, he said ‘I’m alive, I’m normal,'” she says. “He made it very clear that he knew he could have been changed mentally, but he is as wonderful as he used to be.”