Michelle ThompsonHen Avigdori reports that her daughter Noam occasionally wakes up crying, and doctors note that traumatized Israeli toddlers are released.
A 12-year-old girl who spent 50 days as a prisoner in Gaza has reportedly told her father that she occasionally wakes up in the middle of the night wailing and won’t let him leave her sight.
Hen Avigdori’s wife, Sharon, and daughter Noam were kidnapped from the Be’eri kibbutz on October 7 and imprisoned in Gaza in a single room with other relatives.
After being released on November 25, the second day of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Avigdori, an Israeli television comedy writer, said that Sharon, 52, and Noam arrived back home “fine physically and emotionally.”
However, he went on, saying, “My 12-year-old daughter, Noam, won’t let me leave the house. She’s clinging to me tightly because I asked her if I could carry the trash outside, but she refused. Although she has occasionally woken up in the middle of the night wailing, they are usually doing well. She’s thinking about everything. She’s a bright, intelligent young woman.
Speaking at a news conference, Avigdori revealed that children taken captive in Gaza had returned home traumatized, undernourished, and with head injuries.
Danielle Aloni, 45, the older sister of Moran Aloni, and Emilia, her five-year-old daughter, were kidnapped from the Nir Oz kibbutz on what is now known as Black Saturday in Israel and kept captive for 49 days.
Before being freed on November 27, Aloni’s younger sister, Sharon Aloni Cunio, 34, was also abducted along with her twin daughters, Emma and Yuli, ages three. He declared: “Emma and Yuli, my sister Sharon’s daughters, are crying when they wake up and aren’t able to sleep most nights.” Thankfully, they are able to grin occasionally.Emilia, the daughter of my sister Danielle, won’t let her [go anywhere] without her, not even to the restroom or a spare room upstairs in my parents’ house.
Before Sharon Aloni Cunio and the twins were freed, Aloni claimed that Hamas had torn their families apart and moved David, Sharon Aloni Cunio’s husband, to a new place. He claimed that the family had been detained in a “very, very small room” with over ten people in “terrible conditions.”
He claimed that Emilia and Danielle were kept apart, made to move about, and made to communicate in whispers in one location. There was no guarantee that they would have food where they were. They had no idea how much or when they would be fed. I was aware that the captives had disagreements about the water,” Aloni remarked.
All hostages have lost between 10% and 15% of their body weight, according to Dr. Yael Mozer Glassberg, a top physician at Schneider Children’s Medical Center who is treating the children who have been released. According to her, captives reported that food was in little supply and given sporadically. One family reported receiving a cup of tea and a cookie at 10 a.m. and a serving of rice at 5 p.m., the speaker continued.
According to Glassberg, some kids hadn’t had a shower in seven weeks, and their skin rashes and lice infestations were caused by “terrible, terrible” hygienic conditions.
She remarked, “I’ve never seen this much lice in my life, and there were bites all over the body.” “As a doctor, I never thought I would treat head lice in children. I did it with love and tears, and after five or six treatments, we weren’t able to get rid of the lice. Additionally, we had infected wounds from days without disinfection.
She said that the kids suffered from “psychological terror” at the hands of Hamas. “Every family we spoke with had suffered horrendous psychological abuse as a result of being told, ‘Nobody cares for you.'” No one will search for you.
“Don’t worry, you will be here at least for a year, if you go back at all,” they informed one of the teenagers multiple times a day. And you believe that as an adolescent living alone without your parents.
“The psychological terror was terrible,” she continued. To say they returned in roughly good physical shape would be inaccurate. No, they didn’t.
Emily Martinez
