Greater than 15 months have handed since Ilana Gritzewsky was launched from Hamas captivity in Gaza. She nonetheless doesn’t be happy. Her companion stays a hostage.
He was captured together with Ms. Gritzewsky from their dwelling in an Israeli border village on Oct. 7, 2023, in the course of the Hamas-led attack that ignited the war in Gaza and is among the many hostages that Hamas continues to carry, greater than 500 days later.
Traumatized from her personal violent abduction, Ms. Gritzewsky, 31, has devoted herself to campaigning on behalf of the hostages nonetheless within the enclave, together with her companion, Matan Zangauker, now 25, and two males she mentioned she final noticed in a Hamas tunnel whereas in captivity.
They have been all kidnapped from the identical Israeli kibbutz, Nir Oz, close to the border with Gaza — among the many roughly 250 hostages taken that day. Now, about 24 dwelling hostages are nonetheless in Gaza, in response to the Israeli authorities, together with the stays of no less than 35 others who have been taken on that October day.
Ms. Gritzewsky mentioned that her captors beat her, then molested her, as they drove her to Gaza. Taken alone, she mentioned she handed out alongside the best way and awoke within the enclave surrounded by gunmen, half-naked, terrified and susceptible.
The hostages’ destiny has change into ever extra precarious, as Israel has returned to fighting in Gaza in a dangerous bid to stress Hamas into releasing extra captives, amid an deadlock in cease-fire talks.
Trepidation over their destiny has left Ms. Gritzewsky little time for self-healing.
“I’m not likely obtainable for my very own rehabilitation, not for the physique and never least for the soul,” she mentioned.
“I stay with the query of why me and never them. I’ve no reply,” she mentioned, including, “But when I’m out, it’s an indication that God needed me to boost my voice to assist those that are alive acquire their freedom and produce again the lifeless for a correct burial.”
Ms. Gritzewsky’s battle is on the coronary heart of a fraught debate inside Israeli society in regards to the nation’s priorities. She is backed by a broad part of society that desires to prioritize the hostages’ launch at any value, even when it means permitting Hamas to remain in power in Gaza for now. However others — together with highly effective ministers within the right-wing authorities — need to defeat Hamas, even when it delays or prevents a deal to free the remaining hostages.
Mr. Zangauker’s mom, Einav Zangauker, has emerged as a prominent voice in antigovernment protests staged by a number of the households of hostages. They’ve been pissed off by what they view because the Israeli authorities’s foot-dragging over negotiating the captives’ freedom.
Some former hostages and the households of many present ones have as an alternative pinned their hopes on the Trump administration. A number of lately launched hostages flew to the US this month for conferences with President Trump and administration officers. They included Eli Sharabi, who came back emaciated on Feb. 8 to search out his spouse and two daughters had been killed within the October 2023, assault, and Keith Siegel, an American Israeli, who was accompanied by his spouse, Aviva Siegel, who was kidnapped with him and freed in November 2023.
Ms. Gritzewsky lately returned from a month in the US, the place she met with Trump administration officers and Jewish communities, attended the Conservative Political Motion Convention and addressed a rally for the hostages in Central Park.
Ms. Gritzewsky immigrated to Israel from Mexico in her teenagers. After beginning a confectionary enterprise, she went to work in a medical hashish farm in Nir Oz, the place she met Mr. Zangauker. They turned a pair and moved in collectively. “We preferred the quiet of the kibbutz, with our cup of espresso and cigarette,” she mentioned. “We desire anonymity.”
When gunmen overran Nir Oz early that October morning, they went from home to accommodate till the assailants reached theirs, Ms. Gritzewsky mentioned. The couple jumped out of the window of their protected room as assailants shot on the door. They ran in numerous instructions and Ms. Gritzewsky overpassed Mr. Zangauker. Then her nightmare continued. She was rapidly captured, crushed and pushed to Gaza.
She mentioned she was trapped between two gunmen on a bike, her head and face lined with a big piece of nylon or tarpaulin. A house safety digicam belonging to a Nir Oz resident, Eyal Barad, captured the second, displaying her with a white cloth wrapped round her head on the motorbike with the gunmen. Ms. Gritzewsky mentioned that the boys pressed her leg onto the exhaust pipe, burning it, and that one of many kidnappers sitting behind her groped her, touching her breast beneath her shirt, and her legs. She handed out earlier than they crossed the border.
When she got here to, she mentioned, she discovered herself on the ground in a dilapidated constructing, clearly in Gaza, her shirt up baring her breasts and pants pulled down, with seven gunmen standing over her. She doesn’t know what precisely occurred to her whereas she was handed out, however she mentioned she gestured to them and instructed them in English that she had her interval, believing that in all probability saved her from worse. “They hit me and lifted me up,” she mentioned.
“I felt they have been disillusioned,” she mentioned, including, “I don’t assume I’ve ever been so grateful for my interval.”
Over greater than 50 days she was moved from place to put, principally aboveground, at first alone along with her captors after which held with different hostages. Although she instructed her captors she suffered from a continual digestive illness, she mentioned she was not supplied with any medicine. She mentioned she was held in non-public residences, in a hospital and, shortly earlier than her launch, in a tunnel.
Ms. Gritzewsky mentioned she was interrogated about her military service. (She accomplished her army obligation a decade in the past.) One in every of her captors hugged her and instructed her, whereas pointing his pistol at her, that even when there was a deal, she wouldn’t be launched as a result of he needed to marry her and have her kids, she mentioned. She mentioned one instructed her he was a arithmetic trainer, and one other, a lawyer. She mentioned they stole her earrings and a bracelet.
She understood that Mr. Zangauker had additionally been kidnapped to Gaza — when she described his lengthy hair to certainly one of her captors, the captor appeared to substantiate that he was a hostage, referring to him as being from Ofakim, the Zangaukers’ hometown — however she by no means noticed him in captivity.
Ms. Gritzewsky was launched on Nov. 30, 2023, throughout a weeklong cease-fire when lots of the different girls and kids have been freed in trade for Palestinian prisoners. On her return, she found she had a damaged hip. Avigail Poleg-Dvir, Ms. Gritzewsky’s therapist since her launch, mentioned Ms. Gritzewsky had shared along with her the primary particulars of her abduction and captivity: the violence when she was taken, the motorbike journey, the assault, waking up half-naked on the bottom and the intimidation she confronted in captivity. Ms. Gritzewsky mentioned she additionally associated the small print to Israeli police investigators. Hamas didn’t reply to a request for remark.
A United Nations report released last year discovered indicators that members within the Oct. 7 Hamas-led assault on Israel dedicated sexual violence in a number of places and mentioned that some hostages held in Gaza had been subjected to rape and sexual torture. A U.N. commission additionally accused Israel of sexual- and gender-based violence throughout its marketing campaign in Gaza, together with torture, abuse and sexual humiliation.
In December 2024, Hamas launched a video of Mr. Zangauker in captivity, wherein he begged Israel’s leaders to make a deal that might deliver him and the opposite hostages dwelling.
Rights groups and worldwide regulation consultants say {that a} hostage video is, by definition, made beneath duress, and that the statements in it are normally coerced. Israeli officers have referred to as previous Hamas movies a type of “psychological warfare,” and consultants say their manufacturing can represent a struggle crime.
However to Ms. Gritzewsky, the video supplied proof that her companion was nonetheless alive.
“It wasn’t my Matan,” she mentioned. “He was skinny, with frightened eyes, screaming from inside to be saved. It broke me, however it additionally gave me hope,” she mentioned. “He survived.”
