Los Angeles resident Galia Mizrahi said Tuesday night that her cousin and her children, who were abducted by Hamas from the town of Kfar Aza during the October 7 attack, were told by their captors that “nobody loves them and Israel has forsaken them.”
Mizrahi spoke to a packed audience at a synagogue in Malibu, California, as part of an evening to raise awareness of the atrocities at Kfar Aza, and to press for the release of nearly 130 hostages, including 19 women, who remain captive to terrorists in Gaza.
Mizrahi, who was born in Israel but is a U.S. citizen, was already in Israel to bury her father when the October 7 attack took place. Her cousin was murdered, as was his daughter. His wife and remaining children were kidnapped.
The Los Angeles Times noted:
During the Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas militants, Mizrahi’s 48-year-old cousin, Nadav Goldstein Almog, and his 20-year-old daughter, Yam, were among dozens killed in the Kfar Aza kibbutz where they lived. Goldstein Almog’s wife, Chen, and the couple’s three children, ages 9, 11 and 17, were among more than 200 Israelis who were kidnapped and taken to Gaza.
Mizrahi’s account matches that of a doctor who had examined many of the women and children who were released during last month’s truce, and who told CBS News recently that Hamas had used well-planned psychological torture against the hostages:
Pessach also said hostages were subjected to psychological torture (as in being told that Israel no longer exists). “What really struck me is how prepared the Hamas terrorists were with their psychological torment,” he said. “It was structured and preplanned. They’re constantly saying, ‘Nobody cares about you. You are here alone. You hear the bombs falling? They don’t care about you. We’re here to protect you.’ And this really played with their minds.
Mizrahi said that the family had not pressed the mother and surviving children for details, but learned that they had been moved from an apartment to the Hamas tunnels in the final days of their captivity. There, they encountered female hostages — soldiers and civilians — who had been ill-treated. They were able to relay information to Israeli authorities when they returned to Israel.
Two survivors of the Kfar Aza attack, Maya and Dvir Rosenfeld, survived in their home’s safe room with their infant son for 24 hours. They said that they were lucky: Dvir had left the door to the home open, leading Hamas to believe the home had already been attacked and was not worth entering.
They had to shelter in place while the kibbutz’s WhatsApp group carried frantic pleas for help as neighbors were shot, burned alive, or left wounded and dying.
Kfar Aza’s most famous hostages, Shiri Bibas and her two children, are still thought to be alive, somewhere in captivity in Gaza.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
