Report: Teen Israeli Hostage Saved Dog, Defied Hamas in Captivity

The story of how 17-year-old Israeli hostage Mia Leimberg saved her family dog, Bella, and defied Hamas terrorists has emerged.

As Breitbart News noted on Monday, Hamas posed for photographs and videos, for propaganda purposes, with Lemberg as it released her to the Red Cross before a jeering crowd, and as she clutched a dog, identified by Israel’s Army Radio as a “puppy.”

Uri Sela of the Walla news website reported the full story (via Caroline Glick, below).

In a thread on Twitter / X, Sela relates (translated from Hebrew):

The festive scene of the dog of the Leimberg family, against the haters’ rage and anger. This is what this crazy story looks like, as recounted by the family: “At first, Hamas didn’t even realize that it was a dog. Mia just woke up and put on a nightgown, she picked up the dog in her hands and hugged her throughout the abduction. The terrorists thought it was her doll and that’s how they managed to take the dog”

Only at a later stage, after a few hours, did she move a little in Mia’s hands – and then the kidnappers realized that she was a dog. “An argument broke out there, they wanted to take [the dog] away from her. But this is Mia’s dog, and Mia gets very determined when it comes to her, so she argued with them. In these 53 days, the dog ate the little they ate, they secreted [food] for her from the portions they received”

The release video shows a tense conversation between Mia and a Hamas man who spotted her getting out of the car with the dog. “One of the Hamasniks came to take Bella and said ‘What is this?’ And she answered him, ‘She’s mine, from home.’ She signaled to him – no further, don’t touch my dog. It wasn’t an argument, she simply made it clear to him assertively that she was coming home with her”

This is not just an anecdote. “It was not easy to take care of her, but the concern for the dog sustained them there and their survival,” said Aunt Meain. At the Sheba Hospital where they were taken in, preparations were also made for [the dog’s] arrival. “Just as [the hostages] got doctors – she got a vet. [They gave her] ten thousand treatments, they made her cuckoo. They were released and are recovering at home.”

Leimberg lives with her family, originally from Argentina, in Jerusalem. She was visiting her aunt, Clara Merman, in Kibbutz Nir Yitzchak when she and her mother were caught in the terror attack of October 7. She, her mother, and her aunt were all released on Tuesday.

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.