President Trump, in a candid moment reflecting on his recent meeting with eight Israeli hostages freed from Hamas, says he was “shocked” to hear them say that not a single person in Gaza showed them any kindness while in captivity. 

“I said, ‘Did you see anybody in there that was kind?’” Mr. Trump recounted during a press conference in the Oval Office on Friday. “Out of the hundreds of people that you were seeing, did some of them wink at you and say, ‘Don’t worry, you’re gonna be okay,’ or give you a piece of bread?” 

The 47th president continued: “I was shocked. The answer was — nobody. There was nobody. Just the opposite. They’d be slapped and punched. One man broke his ribs, he couldn’t breathe for a month. It was brutal. I was so surprised because you think there’d be a couple of people that would be kind and would say, ‘You’re going to be okay.’ But there was none of that.” 

Mr. Trump hosted former hostages Iair Horn, Omer Shem Tov, Eli Sharabi, Keith Siegel, Aviva Siegel, Naama Levy, Doron Steinbrecher, and Noa Argamani at the Oval Office on Wednesday. The Israeli citizens — whose ages spanned from 20 to 65 — recounted their harrowing experiences in Hamas captivity and offered their gratitude to Mr. Trump for his hand in their release.  

Aviva Siegel, who was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, described her time in captivity as “the worst thing that anybody could go through,” she told the president. To convey the brutality of the conditions, she shared that she witnessed her captor handcuff a boy who was held hostage and cut his hand before smiling. “They used to eat in front of us while they starved us,” she added. 

Eli Sharabi, whose wife and two daughters were murdered by Hamas during the attack, described to Mr. Trump the “starvation, violence, and humiliation,” he suffered from on a daily basis. Upon his return to Israel after nearly 500 days in captivity, Mr. Sharabi had lost more than 40 percent of his body weight and weighed just 97 pounds. 

The acknowledgement from the hostages who visited the White House that they never received any act of kindness from the people in Gaza aligns with previous testimonies of former hostages. Mia Schem, who was shot in the arm at the Nova festival and brought into Gaza, said in an interview after her release that “innocent civilians” in Gaza “don’t exist.” 

“It’s important to me to reveal the real situation about the people who live in Gaza, who they really are, and what I went through there,” she told Israel’s Channel 13 news. “I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists. There are no innocent civilians, not one,” she said. “[Innocent civilians] don’t exist.”

Israeli officials — and freed hostages themselves — have confirmed that many Israelis were held captive in civilian homes. Prime Minister Netanyahu has tried to appeal to Gazans shielding Israeli captives through financial incentives, offering in November a $5 million reward to any individual who returns a captive. There have been no takers.