In pictures of the release, social media users claim to have recognized that former Hamas hostages feel affection and gratitude for the perpetrators. It’s hard to judge from a distance.
Handshakes, friendly smiles, even loving looks at the hostage takers: What social media users claim to have observed when hostages held by Hamas were handed over to Red Cross forces sounds as if they had fraternized with the perpetrators while in captivity , be grateful to them.
This interpretation does not fit with the statements made in interviews by former hostages, survivors and eyewitnesses of the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th – and experts also believe that a serious assessment is impossible based solely on the image material.
“Survival strategy” of the hostages
“Hostages look for a way out in such a traumatic situation and develop a so-called defense mechanism and a survival strategy that then helps them to cope with such a traumatic situation,” says Thorsten Hofmann, head of the Center for Negotiation at Quadriga University Berlin . This also includes establishing contact with the hostage takers, as they are the all-powerful rulers of the situation for the hostages.
From Hofmann’s point of view, this is the most promising strategy, especially in the case of politically and ideologically motivated hostage-taking, such as that carried out by the militant Islamist Hamas. “In this case, it is often the case that the kidnappers see their hostages as inferior life or even as vermin. If I then manage to build a personal relationship with the hostage takers, that at least reduces the likelihood that I will be injured or killed. “
However, it is also conceivable that hostages in such an exceptional psychological situation developed a distorted perception of the perpetrators, says Ingo Schäfer, specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy at the University Hospital Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE). “There is the phenomenon that the perpetrator is not only perceived as negative or that even a form of attachment to the perpetrator arises.” This can also be observed in similar areas such as forced prostitution or domestic violence. The distorted image of the perpetrator could last even longer after the hostage has been taken.
Many factors are still unknown
Overall, however, so many factors played a role that a serious assessment of the hostages’ motives from a distance is not possible, says Schäfer – both on an individual level between hostage takers and hostages and due to the respective public interests associated with it.
The physical condition of the hostages is also a circumstance about which information is only gradually becoming known. All of the freedmen looked noticeably emaciated at the moment they were handed over. The pediatrician Yael Mozer-Glassberg, who treated released children and women, confirmed that the patients had, among other things, metabolic problems caused by malnutrition. The freed children were very intimidated and initially only spoke quietly for days.
At a hearing in the Knesset in early December, Hagar Mizrahi, head of the medical department at the Israeli Ministry of Health, alleged that the hostages had been given clonazepam – an anti-anxiety drug from the benzodiazepine group. He did not say whether this information was obtained from reports from former prisoners or blood tests.
It is more common for hostages to be given drugs, says Hofmann. “This is intended to keep the hostages calm and suppress aggression.” From the kidnappers’ point of view, this makes them easier to control. Of course, there is no external evidence as to whether Hamas is using these means.
The handshake of an 85-year-old
Some social media users saw Mizrahi’s statement as confirmation of their speculation that the supposedly strange behavior of the hostages upon their release was due to drug influence or trauma. In October, for example, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz shook hands with a masked Hamas terrorist and said goodbye with the Hebrew greeting “Shalom,” which means “peace.” Many Israelis then accused her of giving Hamas a propaganda success. Others questioned the 85-year-old’s sanity.
However, at a press conference after her release, Lifshitz appeared composed and rational. She went through hell, she said about the kidnapping. Lifshitz was ambivalent about how Hamas treated them: On the one hand, she reported that the hostages received the same food as their captors, who were careful about the hygienic conditions in the hideout and gave the hostages access to regularly cleaned toilets; In addition, a doctor came every two or three days.
From Hofmann’s point of view, however, Lifshitz’s words should definitely be viewed against the background that she had to leave her 83-year-old husband Oded behind when she was released; his whereabouts are unclear. “Is she really saying this of her own free will or is she perhaps saying it out of fear for her own husband?”
In any case, it can happen that hostages feel unsafe even after they have been released, says Hofmann. “During this time, from the hostage takers’ point of view, they are even more easily manipulated. This means that if I say something to the hostage, there is a very high probability that they will implement it.”
“In love” after severe suffering?
When she was released in late November, 21-year-old Maya Regev was brought to Israeli forces on crutches by masked, armed Hamas terrorists. Her 18-year-old brother Itay was still in the hands of Hamas at the time. He is now free, but their good friend Omer Shem Tov is not. After her handover, Regev, sitting in the Red Cross vehicle, briefly raised her hand and waved, turning her head towards the gunmen. On social media, some users interpreted her brief gesture as “infatuation”.
However, what the two recently described in a television interview speaks a different story: they had attended a music festival together that was stormed by Hamas terrorists on October 7th. The siblings report how terrorists shot them in the legs, kidnapped them in pickup trucks into the Gaza Strip and smuggled them through an underground tunnel to a clinic. There they received rudimentary medical treatment, but the terrorists massively intimidated them and repeatedly threatened them with death.
Maya Regev or other former hostages have not yet reported that they suffered sexual violence at the hands of their kidnappers. However, 21-year-old Mia Schem, who was freed at the end of November, describes her captivity in the apartment of a Hamas terrorist, where she lay in bed with a broken arm, saying that she was very afraid of it. Because her kidnapper watched her constantly and “raped her with his eyes”: “His wife was in the next room with the children. That’s the only reason why he didn’t rape me,” she said.
In October, Hamas released a video showing Shem’s arm being bandaged and her – while still in captivity – telling the camera that Hamas had taken care of her and that everything was fine. In the later interview she explained that she had been forced to take the pictures. Schem also said that shortly before her release she was forced to say that her captors had treated her nicely.
The fact that women in particular are said to have fared well under Hamas’s violence is in sharp contrast to the documented actions of their attack on October 7th: Eyewitnesses and investigators unanimously report that the terrorists specifically seized, raped and mutilated women at several locations , before they murdered her. At the crime scenes, women’s corpses were left with legs spread, breasts cut off, sharp objects or blood stains in the genital area.
Hostages are said to have been drugged
Many of those who have since been released have undergone intensive psychotherapy. What the treating doctors describe hardly leads to the conclusion that there is fraternization with Hamas. Renana Eitan, the head of psychiatry at Tel Aviv’s Ichilow Hospital, told the Guardian in a report published in late December that her patients had suffered the worst abuse and trauma she had seen in her career.
Among the 14 former Hamas hostages being treated by Eitan’s department, nine are minors – two of them younger than ten years old. Her team “couldn’t believe the extent of the cruelty”: one woman was kept captive in a small cage, another collapsed after spending several days in complete darkness. Eitan also reports on children who suffered from withdrawal symptoms after the captors administered ketamine to them in captivity.
“When they came back, they initially seemed very happy and relieved. And they were also very optimistic,” Eitan is quoted as saying by the Guardian. “I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures of children running into their fathers’ arms. But after a day or two we saw the flip side and realized that they were having bad nightmares, flashbacks (So-called ‘intrusive memories’ in everyday situations are among the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD, editor’s note)that they are very scared.” Some of them didn’t know where they were at times or were afraid to sleep because when they woke up they initially thought they were back in the hands of Hamas.
PTSD can only appear later
The release does not automatically end the suffering for the hostages – cases from the past have shown this, as Schäfer emphasizes: “Post-traumatic stress disorders can only occur after the actual stressful situation. People sometimes only feel the stress when they are back in safety and the stress has subsided.”
How long and intense possible trauma lasts for those affected depends on several factors, says Schäfer: “Of course, such very drastic experiences always remain a part of the biography and can also have very long-term effects. On the other hand, there are fortunately effective therapies , especially for post-traumatic disorders, so that it does not have to have a lasting stressful character for everyone affected.”
In addition to therapy, the social environment, the resilience of the person affected and additional stress after the experiences also play a role in coping with trauma, says Schäfer. The latter in particular could have negative consequences due to the highly politically charged situation and the associated pressure on the hostages. False allegations or attempted instrumentalization should therefore be avoided.