Released hostage Arbel Yehoud condemns politicization of captives’ plight
‘I thought they were terrorizing me psychologically’: Arbel says she didn’t believe her captors when they told her hostages had become a political issue in Israel
Released hostage Arbel Yehoud condemned on Monday the politicization of the issue of the hostages held in the Gaza Strip and called on the government to agree to a comprehensive one-time deal for the release of all those still in captivity.
Yehoud was released at the end of last month. Her remarks were delivered in a message read aloud by her father to the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
“I learned Arabic within a month, and I heard my captors express joy at the division in our nation over the issue of the hostages’ release,” Yehiel Yehoud read from his daughter’s statement. “I thought they were terrorizing me psychologically when the issue of the hostages became a political issue. I didn’t believe it until I returned to Israel and was exposed to this harsh reality.”
Mass demonstrations of support for the hostages began soon after the war erupted on October 7, 2023, when the terror group Hamas led thousands of terrorists to invade southern Israel, killing 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 to Gaza.
Alongside these rallies, weekly anti-government protests resumed in Tel Aviv, which had focused on the proposed judicial overhaul before the war. The two movements held distinct events in the city, but participants often joined together after the hostage demonstrations ended. Over time, as the war dragged on, hostages’ families became increasingly impatient with the government for not securing their loved ones’ release. Some openly panned the government over its handling of the situation.
Amid accusations from critics that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was avoiding commitment to a ceasefire to preserve his coalition — due to threats from its right-wing flank to bolt if the war ended before Hamas was destroyed — the hostage support rallies have over time taken on an increasingly hostile tone toward the government.
After some 15 months of fighting, a three-stage hostage-ceasefire deal was reached last month. Under the first phase of the deal, Hamas is gradually releasing some of the hostages, Israel is releasing hundreds of Palestinian security prisoners, and the fighting in Gaza has been paused. Meanwhile, negotiations on the subsequent stages that would ultimately result in a permanent ceasefire and full Israeli withdrawal from the enclave — alongside the release of all the remaining hostages — are meant to begin.
It was during the ongoing first six-week phase that Arbel Yehoud was released. Other freed hostages have also said that their terrorist guards would show them news from Israel of anti-government rallies on their behalf.
“I was held for 482 days without seeing or hearing a single Israeli, from the time that I was separated from my partner Ariel Cunio three hours after I was kidnapped until I met Gadi [Mozes, who was released alongside her]. You can imagine for yourselves some of the horrors I went through during my time in captivity, which all of you saw on the day of my release,” Yehoud wrote.
“Despite that, I returned with the goal of saving my beloved Ariel, his brother David, and all the rest of the hostages… alongside the long rehabilitation process that awaits me.”
She recalled how, hours after she returned to Israel, she beseeched her father not to give up on the fight.
“I need Ariel in order to recover,” she wrote in her statement to lawmakers. “Bring everyone back in one go — the living and the dead — and don’t scare the citizens with the price, but scare yourselves, and maybe that’s what will ensure that you better protect the citizens of this country in the future.”
Yehoud, 29, was freed in Khan Younis along with Gadi Mozes, 80, on January 30, in a chaotic handover during which the two Israeli civilians were forced to walk with Hamas gunmen through a seething crowd in a process that lasted for over an hour.
Yehoud and Mozes, who were both abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, were freed along with five Thai nationals, 482 days after they were kidnapped during Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel. IDF surveillance soldier Agam Berger was released on the same day, at a separate handover in northern Gaza.
On Saturday, protesters who gathered in Tel Aviv and across the country demanded that the government see the ongoing hostage-ceasefire deal through to its latter stages to ensure the release of all the Hamas captives in Gaza.
Their calls came as Netanyahu has continued to insist that the war will go on and that the current ceasefire is only temporary. Hostage support groups fear that if the fighting restarts before all the captives are released, some of them could be left behind in Gaza.
Some have urged reaching a deal in which all of the remaining hostages are released in one stroke.
Seventy-three of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 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 the 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 by troops alive, 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. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
