Oct 24, 2023
Freed Israeli Hostage Recounts Experience With Hamas Captors
85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz talked about her experience being held hostage by Hamas and criticized Netanyahu's negligence.
- 12 minutes
They touched down in Tel Aviv overnight.
A short flight by helicopter from Egypt
following the Hamas handover, a cup
of tea, a brief farewell to their heavily
armed captors in those green headbands.
[00:00:15]
>> It's okay, let's go.
>> Speaker 1: Beliing the terrifying
ordeal they've been through.
Yocheved Lifshitz and Nurit Cooper,
out of the hands of Hamas into the arms
of the Red Cross at the Egyptian border.
>> Speaker 2: 85 year old
Yocheved Lifshitz was kidnapped by Hamas
[00:00:33]
terrorists on October 7th.
And luckily, she, along with her friend,
who she lived with in a Kibbutz,
were released just yesterday.
Now, she is the first hostage who has
spoken to the press about what she
experienced.
[00:00:48]
And that handshake that you see in
the video right next to me has led
to a lot of controversy, some frustration,
and backlash from the Israeli government,
because why would you do that?
Why would you shake hands with Hamas,
considering what Hamas had
carried out in Israel?
[00:01:03]
And I was actually really
curious about it as well.
Now, luckily, she did speak to the press.
We do have some of her statements.
First, let's talk about what she
said about the kidnapping itself and
how she was treated by Hamas.
Hamas released her and
her neighbor and friend, Nurit Cooper,
[00:01:20]
who's 79 years old, on Monday.
And later, they were reunited with family
members who rushed to their bedside at
a hospital in Tel Aviv.
Now, the kidnapping itself
was incredibly brutal,
based on what she has
shared with the public.
Militants snatched her from her
home in the Kibbutz of Nir Oz and
[00:01:37]
drove her away on a motorbike toward Gaza,
a painful act during which she said
she was beaten and sustained bruises.
Now, she also said she was
forced to walk on wet ground and
descended into an underground tunnel
system she likened to a spider web,
[00:01:55]
where she was greeted
by people who told us.
We believe in the Quran and promised not
to harm her and her fellow hostages.
And here she is describing
more of what she experienced.
>> Speaker 1: I went through hell,
Lifshitz said at a press conference.
[00:02:10]
She describes how she was
kidnapped on a motorcycle.
She says she was taken inside a miles long
spider web like tunnel system in Gaza.
They treated us gently, and
they met all our needs, she said.
They seemed ready for this.
[00:02:26]
They prepared it for a long time.
She said her husband
was separated from her.
He is still believed to be held by Hamas,
along with at least 220 more hostages.
>> Speaker 2: Now, I do think that
the fact that her 83 year old husband is
[00:02:44]
still held captive by Hamas
is an important detail to
remember as I continue on with this story.
Because she did say some positive
things about how she was treated
by Hamas as well.
Each of the five hostages in her
group received their own doctor, and
there was a paramedic present who
supervised medication, she said.
[00:03:03]
When she was asked why she decided to
shake the hand of a Hamas militant.
She said, quote,
they were very generous to us, very kind.
They kept us clean.
They took care of every detail.
There are a lot of women, and
they know about feminine hygiene, and
[00:03:20]
they took care of everything there later.
She also had some negative things to say
about the Israeli government and the fact
that they didn't have the intel to foil
this plot by Hamas in the first place.
I'll get to that in a moment.
But she also said, they really took
care of the sanitary side of things so
[00:03:40]
that we don't get sick.
Now, look, her husband is
still held captive by Hamas.
So I don't know if that is playing a role
in what she is saying about them or
if she's 100% honest about
the way that they treated her.
[00:03:56]
What I do know is Hamas is
not the good guys here.
I know that there are some people who try
to make it seem as such, on the left,
on the far left.
No, what they did to innocent
Israeli civilians was brutal.
It was disgusting.
I can't get the image of the Israeli
woman who know her entire backside is
[00:04:15]
just covered in blood because she
had just been assaulted, okay?
I can't get those images out of my mind,
so please do not try to provide cover for
Hamas in any way, shape, or form.
Now, look, the other thing is,
Hamas wants propaganda that favors them.
So maybe treating some of these
hostages well will help to,
[00:04:33]
I don't know,
launder their image a little bit.
I don't know, but
I just don't believe that Hamas is like,
a group of good guys who are,
like, treating people well.
>> Speaker 3: Look,
I don't want to have absurd conversations.
Of course Hamas is not good guys, and
just because you treat a hostage
gently doesn't make you a good guy.
[00:04:50]
You took the hostage in the first place,
and you beat the 85 year old as you
were capturing her and
kidnapping her in the first place.
So I don't want those hostages
criticized in any way, shape, or form.
>> Speaker 2: Agreed?
>> Speaker 3: They live through hell.
So when I saw the handshake, I thought
it was actually perfectly normal,
[00:05:07]
I'll tell you why.
Because there's a thing
called Stockholm syndrome.
And so when you're captured by someone and
they treat you even a little decently,
you begin to empathize with them,
because you're a human being, and
we're social animals.
And that's how humans interact, especially
in a traumatic situation like that,
[00:05:24]
where you're looking for
a lifeline, right?
So it's a common psychological
phenomenon that we're aware of.
So don't criticize that poor woman whose
husband is still being kept by Hamas,
who's beaten and then taken as hostage.
[00:05:39]
That's crazy to criticize her.
It's also crazy to think that just
because you treat hostages gently that
that in any way mitigates anything
else you've ever done, right?
>> Speaker 2: She and her husband were
also, based on what I've read about them,
[00:05:54]
they sound like incredible and
wonderful people.
They believe in doing humanitarian work
on behalf of Palestinian civilians.
They would help Palestinians
get to the hospital,
that was some of the work that they did.
So when she says shalom to the Hamas
militant as she shakes his hand, I mean,
[00:06:13]
this is a woman who genuinely
does believe in peace, and
I really do commend her for that.
I commend her for her strength and
her willingness to speak out.
>> Speaker 3: So why do we always
speak out against violence?
Well, obviously on all sides,
obviously for moral reasons, right?
[00:06:28]
But there's an extra layer to it, which
is that violence is always irrational.
So I remember that the Greek population
was super mad at the neoliberal policies
that were being instituted and
was kind of crushing the local population.
[00:06:43]
The bankers had screwed up, and they
were taking it out on the local Greeks.
And there was a violent situation
at a bank, and they killed someone.
You know who they killed?
A poor bank teller.
They didn't kill the bank executive.
They didn't kill the guy who made the
decision, who wasn't even in the building,
they killed a random poor civilian, right?
[00:06:59]
Violence is never the answer.
So in this situation, who did Hamas kill?
They killed a whole bunch of people
who were actually super sympathetic to
Palestinians, okay?
And then here, it doesn't look like it was
a hate crime at least the police are not
clear about it yet.
But in Michigan,
a female rabbi stabbed to death,
[00:07:17]
worked with Muslims and Jews and
brought people together.
That might have been a random
killing in that case, I don't know.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, actually, I've been
following that story because I've been
very curious to see what
the authorities find.
So far the authorities say that there's no
evidence to indicate that it was a hate
[00:07:33]
inspired murder.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, I got you.
But overall, on top of being immoral,
it's almost always irrational
to do the violence.
You don't know who you're killing, right?
Well, first of all, ten out of ten times
you're killing an innocent person, and
then half the time, you're killing someone
that would have been on your side.
[00:07:51]
It's so counterproductive, so wrong.
So it's good to get their voice here and
don't criticize them for
anything they're saying.
Let's say that she's 100% right, which I
believe her, that in that brief window,
[00:08:07]
those captors were not extra brutal,
but helped with her hygiene, right.
It doesn't mitigate what
they did 1% anyway.
So what do you want her to do,
lie about it?
That's absurd.
>> Speaker 2: And remember, Hamas took
hostages as a bargaining chip, right?
[00:08:25]
So what good is your bargaining
chip if you treat them so
brutally that they die in your custody?
>> Speaker 3: 100%.
And it is like, again,
it's common in the kidnapping world.
It's absurd, but the stories that I
have read, the articles that I've read
[00:08:40]
throughout my life is that once you
have the hostage, you treat them well,
because at that point,
it's a super crass way of putting it.
But the goods that you have,
the property, the leverage.
>> It's the leverage you have.
>> The power that you have.
>> Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
>> Speaker 3: So if you ruin that or
you're cruel to them,
[00:08:57]
the minute they're having a conversation
as proof of life, for example.
They're gonna say,
they're treating me terribly,
then people are going to get even more
angry, and you're less likely to get
the thing that you're looking for
in return for those hostages.
So, again, no credit for
[00:09:12]
handling this like a normal hostage
situation when you took the hostage.
>> Speaker 2: Exactly, totally.
>> Right,
I have one other piece of context.
>> Speaker 2: Yeah, so
before you get to that, Cenk,
I just wanted to share her thoughts on
the Israeli government and its military,
because she had some critique,
to say the least.
[00:09:30]
She said the following.
She also accused the Israel Defense
Forces, IDF and Shin Bet intelligence
service of not taking threats
from Hamas seriously and said.
The costly Gaza border
fence erected by Israel
had done nothing to protect her
community from Hamas's attack.
[00:09:48]
The lack of awareness by Shin Bet and
the IDF hurt us a lot.
They warned us three weeks beforehand.
They burned fields,
they set fire balloons, and
the IDF did not treat it seriously.
>> Speaker 3: Wow.
>> Speaker 2: Now,
she's not the only one who's
making those allegations.
[00:10:06]
Just as the Hamas terror
attacks had occurred,
the Egyptian government came out and
claimed that.
The Israeli government had
ignored some of the warnings and
intel indicating that Hamas
was planning something big.
So, look, I'm obviously not an expert.
[00:10:22]
I'm not privy to what kind of intelligence
was shared with the Israeli government,
but I've now seen this reported multiple
times, and it does make one wonder.
And by the way, that's part of the reason
why the people of Israel, right.
The civilians of Israel are not
in any way giving kudos to
[00:10:37]
Benjamin Netanyahu because
he failed to keep them safe.
>> Speaker 3: Yeah, so
last thing is, according to reports,
they actually had negotiated for
releasing 50 hostages and
in return for humanitarian aid.
[00:10:56]
And remember, Israel is only allowing 4%
of the normal amount of goods that go into
Gaza at this point for
their humanitarian aid.
But the deal fell apart when Israel said,
no, no fuel.
But they're gonna have to give them
fuel at some time, otherwise all of
[00:11:12]
the hospitals will run out of power and
everyone in the hospitals will die.
I don't know if Netanyahu
wants that to happen,
but they're gonna have to give in on fuel.
What?
Let's say that that happens, and now
you've slaughtered thousands of people in
[00:11:28]
hospitals, then you're still
not gonna give them fuel.
No, you're gonna give them fuel at some
point, and you're not giving it to them.
You're just allowing it to come in,
so why not get the other 48?
What a terrible deal by Netanyahu.
[00:11:44]
What an idiotic move if
the reports are true,
our number one priority is
supposed to be the hostages.
But that's not his number
one priority at all and
protecting Israel was not
his number one priority.
His number one priority is himself.
He thinks he's gonna retain power
the more violence and war there is.
[00:12:03]
That's who Netanyahu is and he doesn't
give a damn about those sausages and,
of course, neither does Hamas.
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