'Death sentence' for remaining hostages: Released captives slam Gazan fighting

Following the recent attacks in the Gaza Strip, a number of former hostages who were released or rescued from captivity posted heartbreaking posts on social media on Tuesday, expressing their pain and sense of devastation, but also their commitment to fight until each and every one of the captives is released.

"Israel’s decision to return to fighting brings me back to Gaza, to the moments where I heard the sounds of explosions around me and where I feared for my life as I was afraid that the tunnel where I was being held would collapse," Yarden Bibas wrote on Facebook.

"My wife and children were kidnapped alive and were brutally murdered in captivity. The military pressure endangers the hostages while an agreement brings them home. I am petrified for my best friends, David and Ariel Cunio. I lost my Shiri, Ariek and Kfir, but David can still return alive to Sharon, Emma and Yuli and Ariel to his partner Arbel Yehud and his family."

We must stop the fighting and bring everyone home first of all.

Emily Damari addressed her friends, abducted twins Gali and Ziv Bergman from Kfar Azar, in an Instagram story: "Gali, Ziv and the rest of the abductees – we will continue to fight without a break." 

Eliyahu Cohen, whose friends Elkana Bochbot and Alon Ohel are still held in Gaza, called it a "death sentence – Elkana and Alon, forgive me my brothers."

Noa Argaman shared a post on X with a broken heart emoji, in which she expresses the sorrow and pain for the rest of the abductees who are still in Gaza and are experiencing the attack and its dangers up close. Argaman shared a post by captive Omri Miran's brother-in-law, Moshe Emilio Lavi.

Liri Elbag, who was abducted from the Nachal Oz base and released in the recent hostage release deal, wrote: "What about those who were left behind? They are forgotten again. They once put their lives at risk."

Keith Siegal's daughter, Shir, shared a tough testimony of her father's captivity moments, in which he experienced the bombings of the Israeli Air Force – and how terrorists vent their anger on captives. "Bombs fell around, with no ability for Dad to fend himself," she wrote on Instagram. "My dad was left alone in the small room, feeling he would never return alive."

Itai Siegal, who read a statement written by his uncle, told the Knesset (Israeli parliament) Law Committee that the "59 hostages probably feared for their lives in the early morning when the IDF started bombing... My uncle asks to convey that the fighting in Gaza endangers the lives of the hostages and prolongs their suffering that has already lasted 529 long and unbearable days. We must put an end to the neglect and bring back all the hostages to Israel."