Former South African-Israeli hostage Aviva Siegel recounted in an interview published on Sunday how Hamas terrorists beat, tortured and sexually abused women held hostage in Gaza during her 51 days of captivity in the wake of the Hamas-led invasion into the northwestern Negev on Oct. 7, 2023.
“I’m a witness of all of the girls who were beaten up into pieces,” she told The Daily Mail from her home in northern Israel.
Seeing one girl return after she was abused, Seigel continued, “she was purple; I wanted to die. That was one of the hardest moments: knowing what was happening to the young girls.”
She related that the female hostages were forced by their Hamas captors into wearing tight, barely fitting clothing, and showering naked in front of the terrorists, the report read.
One guard entered the bathroom and forced one of the girls to perform oral sex on him, Siegel said.
“I’m a witness of all of the girls who were beaten up into pieces.”
— Israel Foreign Ministry (@IsraelMFA) August 24, 2026
Aviva Siegel witnessed Palestinian Hamas terrorists beat, torture and sexually abuse women held hostage in Gaza.
Nearly three years later, she and her husband Keith are telling the world what they endured.…
Siegel, 65, and her husband, Keith, 67, a dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, were abducted from Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Oct. 7 massacre. She was released on Nov. 26, 2023, as part of a temporary ceasefire agreement. Her husband was redeemed after 484 days in captivity.
The pair elaborated further about their harrowing experiences.
“After a couple of days, Keith looked at me and said he couldn’t breathe, because there was a lack of oxygen. I couldn’t breathe myself, and I remember trying to figure out what was happening, or if we were just going to die,” Siegel said.
“I said to him, ‘Just lie down and try and breathe.’. And while he lay down, I was scared to look at Keith, dead. I remember saying to myself, ‘Just don’t look at him, because you don’t want to see him dead.’ And just trying to say, ‘Please, let me die first, because I don’t want to see Keith dead,’” the former hostage was quoted as saying.
Keith Siegel recounted the time his captors became even crueler, after a ceasefire collapsed on Dec. 1, 2023.
“I’m lying on my back, on the floor. He came up to me, standing above me, and he starts screaming at me and cursing me. And he spat on me, he kicked me. He kicked me in my legs, and he kicked me in my ribs,” he said.
While he was held in total isolation for six months, Siegel asked the guards to teach him Arabic, in an attempt to keep himself sane.
One guard agreed, but asked Siegel to repeat words of the Shahada, a Muslim declaration of faith recital that converts non-Muslims to Islam. The guard said, “Okay, now you’re a Muslim,” to which Siegel said he replied, “No, I’m not a Muslim; I’m a Jew.”
Siegel was released on Feb. 1, 2025, and was reunited with his wife and their four children.
Aviva Siegel released a memoir in March, titled The Main Thing Is to Wake up to a New Morning.
“Everybody who reads the book will feel what it’s like to be a hostage in Gaza, underneath the ground, feeling like it’s the end of the world,” she told The Daily Mail.
