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It was a moment of grace in an ocean of hatred and belligerence.<\/p>\n
As Israeli hostage Yocheved Lifshitz was released by Hamas under cover of darkness to Red Cross workers on the Egyptian border, the 85-year-old turned to one of her gun-wielding captors and shook his hand.<\/p>\n
\u201cShalom,\u201d she repeatedly told the masked terrorist wearing a balaclava and bulletproof vest emblazoned with a Hamas flag.<\/p>\n
Her use of the Hebrew greeting word, which translates literally as \u201cpeace\u201d, to one of her captors seemed to mark a rare kind of character.<\/p>\n
The man whose hand she shook was, after all, part of the group who slaughtered 1400 Israelis on October 7 and took 200 hostage.<\/p>\n
But the gesture was fitting for a woman who, along with her husband, 83-year-old Oded, has been a peace activist all her life.<\/p>\n
Lifshitz was released alongside 79-year-old Nurit Cooper on Monday night.<\/p>\n
At a press conference on Tuesday, a frail-looking Lifshitz told the world of the \u201chell\u201d she went through as a captive.<\/p>\n
Sitting in a wheelchair in a hospital in Israel she said she was robbed and beaten with a stick by her captors, but also described them as \u201ccourteous\u201d, offering her pita sandwiches and shampoo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI went through a nightmare we couldn\u2019t have imagined,\u201d she said, stuttering as she spoke while her British daughter crouched next to her, translating into English.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey put me on a motorbike, took me through that fence that cost 2 billion shekels ($775 million) and did not help one bit. As we rode, the motorcycle driver hit me with a wooden stick. They didn\u2019t break my ribs but it hurt a lot, making it difficult to breathe.\u201d<\/p>\n
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This image taken from video released by Al Qassam brigades on its Telegram channel, shows Yocheved Lifshitz, 85, shaking hands and thanking a member of Hamas as she is released to the Red Cross.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Al Qassam<\/cite><\/p>\n Lifshitz\u2019s account gives extraordinary insight into the terrorists\u2019 preparation and their network of underground hiding places.<\/p>\n After the captors took Lifshitz and other hostages deep into Gaza, they took off her watch and jewellery as they dismounted the bike and led her away until they reached Hamas\u2019 infamous tunnels.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went underground and walked for kilometres in wet tunnels \u2013 for two or three hours in a spiderweb of tunnels,\u201d she told reporters at the hospital as staff kept bringing her cups of water.<\/p>\n She said she saw about 50 other hostages in one room, and soon she and four other people were led to a different room.<\/p>\n Unlike on the way into Gaza, the captors in the tunnels treated them well, she said.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were friendly, they took care of us,\u201d she said. \u201cOne of the hostages was badly injured from a motorbike accident, and they gave me antibiotics and other medicine.\u201d<\/p>\n She described her captives as \u201cvery friendly\u201d and \u201cvery courteous\u201d people who had organised well in advance for taking hostages.<\/p>\n \u201cThey seemed ready for this, they prepared for a long time, they had everything that men and women needed, including shampoo,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe ate the same food they did \u2013 pitas with cream cheese, melted cheese, cucumbers. That was a meal for an entire day,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n Hamas released the two women late on Monday, citing \u201ccompelling humanitarian reasons\u201d without offering any other details. The remainder, including the elderly and children, are still held captive without a clear prospect of return.<\/p>\n When Lifshitz said \u201cshalom\u201d to her captors, the Hamas gunman replied with the word \u201csalamtek\u201d, which means \u201ctake care\u201d.<\/p>\n Talk of peace after the Hamas massacre in which her house was destroyed and her friends killed may sound incongruous.<\/p>\n Since the attack, at least 5087 Palestinians have been killed in two weeks of Israeli strikes, including 2055 children, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.<\/p>\n But Lifshitz is no armchair peacenik.<\/p>\n She and her husband, who remains a Hamas hostage along with Cooper\u2019s spouse, are \u201chuman rights activists, peace activists for all their life\u201d, her grandson Daniel Lifshitz said.<\/p>\n \u201cFor more than a decade, they took … sick Palestinians from the Gaza Strip, not from the West Bank, from the Gaza Strip, every week from the Erez border to the hospitals in Israel to get treatment for their disease, for cancer, for anything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The couple were residents of Nir Oz kibbutz, one of the Israeli communities near the Gaza Strip which Hamas militants attacked on October 7.<\/p>\n Lifshitz\u2019s daughter Sharone, an artist and academic in London, said: \u201cI\u2019m so proud of her. She is amazing. Just the way she walked off and then came back and said thank you is quite incredible to me. It\u2019s so her.<\/p>\n Yocheved Lifshitz speaks to the media outside Ichilov Hospital.<\/span>Credit: <\/span>Getty<\/cite><\/p>\n \u201cThere are still over 200 people there. And we must not get caught only in our personal happiness but work towards the release of everybody.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is one small ray of light. But there is a huge darkness. The war is still going on. Atrocities we haven\u2019t even started to process.\u201d<\/p>\n As for her father, she said: \u201c[He] was very involved in political things in the kibbutz. He was very involved in rights for Palestinians and working towards peace with our neighbours.<\/p>\n \u201cHis whole life was to find a way to live together. He felt it was very easy to find a way and was very disappointed and fought very hard against this idea of occupation and perpetual war.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a tragedy that the people who were killed, so many of them were immediate neighbours of people of Gaza and truly, truly believed in working towards peace with our neighbours and felt that it was very possible to make peace with our enemies.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s a twist of history that these communities that were really peace-loving \u2026 are the ones who sustained such a horrendous massacre.\u201d<\/p>\n Have she or her parents given up on finding peace with their neighbours?<\/p>\n \u201cNo \u2026 We have come out of the Holocaust. I have worked extensively in Germany and have many German friends. We have to find a way. There is no alternative. If anything, it makes me even more resolved. The way has got longer \u2026 [but] as nations we have to find a way forward.\u201d<\/p>\n The Telegraph, London<\/strong><\/p>\n Get a note directly from our foreign <\/i><\/b>correspondents <\/i><\/b>on what\u2019s making headlines around the world. <\/i><\/b>Sign up for the weekly What in the World newsletter here<\/i><\/b>.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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