Warning: Graphic content
Former Israeli hostages Keith and Aviva Siegel, who were held captive by Hamas, appeared before the UN Committee Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment (UNCAT) in Geneva on Wednesday, providing harrowing testimony about the humiliation, violence, and sexual abuse they and other hostages endured in captivity.
Keith Siegel told the committee: “I am not asking for your sympathy. I am asking that you ensure the horrors the terrorists committed against me and others in captivity will never happen again.”
He recounted that after his wife Aviva was released, he was intermittently held with other captives or kept in complete isolation: “Altogether, I spent about six months completely alone - a 66-year-old man, cut off from the world, terrified, not knowing the fate of my loved ones.”
Siegel described the humiliation inflicted by his captors: “Just for ‘fun,’ the guards compared parts of our bodies, threatened us with knives, humiliated us, and prevented us from going to the bathroom until we could no longer hold it. Every basic human right was taken away. I was starved and denied water. More than once, I was forced to strip naked in front of them while they shaved my body.”
He added: “Throughout my captivity in Gaza, I imagined the moment I would come home and visit my elderly mother. The first thing I asked my wife when I returned by helicopter on the way to the hospital was how my mother was doing. She had died two months before my release. She never knew I came back. I never got to say goodbye.”
Aviva Siegel also gave a heart-wrenching account of abuse, humiliation, and inhuman conditions: “When we were taken underground in Gaza, there was a boy from my community. Hamas terrorists tied his hands with plastic cuffs. He was covered in blood, we were covered in blood. Later, when one of the terrorists came to cut off the cuffs with a cutter, he cut the boy’s hand. I just wanted to scream, and I saw the terrorist smiling as he did it.”
“For 51 days I was certain I would die. They threatened me, starved me, didn’t give me enough water. I lost ten kilograms in 51 days. I hid food for Keith. I saw him losing weight. We were starving while the terrorists gained weight. They ate and chewed in front of us while refusing to give us anything.”
She also testified about sexual abuse against young female hostages: “One day, a young girl came out of the shower trembling. I wasn’t allowed to hug her, but I did anyway. Later she told us that one of the terrorists had touched her.”
“The most terrible thing for me was watching how they tortured my husband Keith and what they did to the girls. I wasn’t allowed to hug, help, or even cry. I tried all that time to hold on to my humanity.”
Aviva described the relentless control the captors exercised: “They forced us to lie down from 5 p.m. until 9 a.m. the next morning. We weren’t allowed to move. My body ached. I wanted to stretch, to sit, to scream, ‘Just let me sit for five minutes.’ They didn’t allow it. They threatened to kill me. One night, I took my foot out from under the blanket - a Hamas terrorist came and screamed at me that I wasn’t allowed to do that. It sounds small, but that was the level of control they had over us. Most of my time in Gaza I suffered from stomach pain and diarrhea because they made us drink contaminated water. I’m 62 years old, and I had to ask permission just to go to the bathroom.”