Fresh reports are emerging of Hamas abuse of Israeli child hostages during their time in captivity as Israeli medical professionals speak out about their experiences treating those who have been freed so far. 

One doctor, for example, recently spoke of the orthopedic injuries he had treated among some of the children returned to Israel during the cease-fire.

“We saw children with orthopedic injuries. There were injuries to the legs, hands, as well as scars on children, including a burn on a child’s leg, which he said was from a motorcycle,” said the director of Ichilov’s Dana-Dwek Children’s Hospital, Dror Mendel, in an interview with Israel’s i24 News. 

Mr. Mendel said the children experienced terrible hygiene conditions. “We saw very low hygiene conditions at levels I don’t remember encountering in children, including lice, rashes and skin infections,” he said.

The children held hostage also lost significant weight. “For a child to lose 10 kilos [22 pounds] is a lot of weight,” said the Director of Pediatrics Unit at Ichilov hospital, Ronit Lubetzky.

Other medical professionals, like the director of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center, Efrat Bron-Harlev, spoke about the psychological terror that the children endured. “One child told us that she actually thought everyone had forgotten about her. Her Hamas kidnappers told her that nobody cares about her anymore and nobody wants her back,” she said at a press conference. 

“You can hear the bombs around you, they [Hamas] told her. All they want to do is to kill you and us together,” Ms. Bron-Harlev recounted of a 13-year-old girl who had been held captive for 50 days and was repeatedly told statements of this nature during her captivity. 

“Now she is back and she has to believe that we were looking for her, that her parents were looking for her. That they cared about her. This is not something that will take a day or two to make that child believe,” she added.

Ms. Bron-Harlev explained that as soon as the helicopter with the freed hostages arrived at the medical center’s helipad, she boarded the helicopter to greet the children and check their well-being and to see if they needed immediate medical care. 

“They looked like shadows of children, not like children” she recalled. 

She also said that the children would whisper for the first few days and would always ask permission to look out of the window or to shower. Many of the children had not showered for the two months of Hamas captivity or if they were lucky, they had the chance to shower with a cold bucket of water according to Ms. Bron-Harlev. 

She told the New York Times that one child kept track of time by tearing off pieces of his fingernails. The child would save the clippings in order to count the days.

Ms. Bron-Harlev referred to one freed three-year-old child who talked about a “red man” that she saw on a tractor. Her mother explained that she and her child had been abducted by Hamas terrorists and were taken to Gaza on the back of a tractor along with a seriously injured soldier. By the time they got to Gaza, her daughter was covered with the soldier’s blood.

Ms. Bron-Harlev, who assembled a team of social workers and psychologists, alongside doctors, nurses and kitchen staff, said it was the mission of the hospital’s caregivers to help these children recover. “How do we make this memory a memory that will make them better and stronger people and not a memory that will ruin their lives?” she said. “I think this is our greatest mission now as caregivers.”

The manager of the Safra Children’s Hospital at Sheba Medical Center, Itai Pessach, said that he found himself sitting by the bedsides of the hostages for hours listening to their stories. “It’s no different from the people who survived the ghettos or concentration camps. It feels and sounds the same,” he told i24 News.  

Hamas terrorists kidnapped 40 children and youth on October 7 and held them in secret locations in the Gaza Strip. To date, the terror organization is still holding 138 people in captivity according to the IDF spokesperson, including the Bibas family — 10-month-old baby, Kfir, his four-year-old brother, Ariel, their mother Shiri and father, Yarden.