From the Liveblog of
Monday, March 31, 2025
Keith Siegel says he was forced to watch sexual assault of female hostages while in captivity
Jacob Magid is The Times of Israel's US bureau chief
Recently released hostage Keith Siegel says he was forced to watch fellow female captives be sexually assaulted by their Hamas captors while he was held in Gaza.
“I witnessed a young woman who was being tortured by the terrorist. I mean literal torture — not just in a figurative sense,” Siegel tells CBS’s “60 Minutes.”
Siegel, who was released from captivity in February after 484 days, says he was forced to watch the abuse. “I saw sexual assault with female hostages.”
Recalling the day he was kidnapped by Hamas, the 65-year-old dual American-Israeli national says he and his wife Aviva were “driven into Gaza and then taken into a tunnel — feeling in danger, feeling life threatened, terrorists around us with weapons.”
They lived underground in Hamas-dug tunnels where “we were gasping for our breath.”
He says his treatment got significantly worse after the end of the first brief ceasefire and hostage deal in November 2023, during which his wife was released.
“The terrorists became very mean and very cruel and violent. Much more so. They were beating me and starving me,” Siegel says. “They would often eat in front of me and not offer any food.
Once a month, the hostages were allowed to shower with a bucket of cold water and a small cup.
His captors shaved his head and private parts. “Maybe it amused them… I felt humiliated,” Siegel says.
His captors managed to completely break his spirit.
“I felt that I was completely dependent on the terrorists, that my life relied on them — whether they were going to give me food, bring me water, protect me from the mobs that would lynch me,” Siegel says.
“I was left alone several times, and I was very, very scared that maybe they won’t come back and I’ll be left there. And what do I do then?” he recounts. “Maybe that was a way for them to torture me in a psychological way, make me think, ‘Should I escape? Should I not escape? Should I try to escape?'”
“But I’m pretty sure they knew I wouldn’t dare to do that because I needed them,” Siegel says.
He says that even after his release, he spends most of his day worrying about those hostages still in Gaza — 24 of whom are believed to still be alive.
The camera stays on Siegel as he breaks down, crying bitterly, folding his head into his hands and then onto the table in front of him.
The Times of Israel Community.