An 85-year-old Israeli hostage released by Hamas has said she went “through hell” during her kidnap, describing how she was beaten with sticks during her abduction, driven off on a motorbike and forced to walk for a number of hours through a huge “spider’s web” of wet tunnels in Gaza.
However, Yocheved Lifshitz – the first to offer a picture of the ordeal faced by those taken hostage by Hamas – also spoke of the “care” she received from some of her captors once she was in the tunnels and saying was told she was not going to be hurt, something that may have led to an extraordinary gesture at the moment of her release after two weeks in captivity.
