The Daily Signal - Former Israeli Hostage Details ‘Hell’

Episode Date: December 26, 2024

Aviva Siegel has not seen her husband Keith in a year, a separation made more painful by the fact that she knows firsthand what her husband is going through. Siegel was hostage in Gaza with her husband for 51 days before being freed in a hostage deal. Kept underground in Hamas tunnels, Siegel describes her capacity as “hell.”   “I touched death, and that's one of the hardest things on earth,” Siegel said. “While we were lying there, I was trying to think, what is it going to feel like? Am I going to die before Keith? And just prayed that I'd die first because I did not want to see Keith suffer.”   Siegel sits down with The Daily Signal to share her harrowing experience as a hostage in Gaza, and to call for her husband’s freedom.   Following the conversation with Siegel, Yarden Gonen and Amit Levy join the show to share about their siblings, Romi Gonen, 24, and Naama Levy, 20, who were taken hostage on Oct. 7. The two young women are among 10 females still believed to be alive and being held hostage by Hamas.   Keep Up With The Daily Signal Sign up for our email newsletters: https://www.dailysignal.com/email     Subscribe to our other shows:  The Tony Kinnett Cast: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-tony-kinnett-cast  Problematic Women: https://www.dailysignal.com/problematic-women  The Signal Sitdown: https://www.dailysignal.com/the-signal-sitdown    Follow The Daily Signal:  X: https://x.com/DailySignal  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/  Truth Social: https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal  YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/DailySignal  Rumble: https://rumble.com/c/TheDailySignal    Thanks for making The Daily Signal Podcast your trusted source for the day’s top news. Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk, business. Welcome to the Daily Signal bonus edition. I'm Virginia Allen. I hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and a very happy Hanukkah to all of our friends who are celebrating Hanukkah right now. We have likely spent this week thinking a lot about our family and hopefully you've had some time to spend with your family in person. But of course, we know that not everyone has that privilege. And specifically this year, I'm thinking about the more than 100 hostages that are. still in Gaza, seven of whom are American citizens. I recently had the privilege of sitting down with some of the family members of those hostages that are still in Gaza, and I talked with them about how they're doing, how they continue to advocate for the release of their family members. And so today, I'm really glad to bring you a couple of those conversations. First, we're going to hear from Aviva Segal. She was a hostage herself in Gaza for 51 days. and her 65-year-old husband, Keith Segal, is still hostage in Gaza.

He's also an American citizen. Then in our second conversation, we're going to hear from two young people, Yarden Godin and Amit Levy. Yardin's little sister, Womi, is 24 years old and is still hostage in Gaza, more than 400 days after she was taken on October 7th. And Amit's little sister is just 20 years old. Her name is Nama Levy. She was also taken hostage on October 7th.

We hear from both of them about how they continue to advocate for the freedom of their younger siblings. Stay tuned for these conversations right after this. Hey, it's Rob Lewy from The Daily Signal. Want to stay ahead of the curve on conservative news and analysis? Subscribe to our free Daily Signal email newsletters. You'll get the latest headlines, detailed policy coverage, and exclusive interviews delivered straight to your inbox. Whether you're interested in our morning update, breaking news alerts, or weekly roundups, we've got you covered. Don't let the liberal media control the narrative.

Sign up now at dailysignal.com slash email and join thousands of informed conservatives who rely on the daily signal to cut through the noise and get the truth. Aviva, thank you so much for being here. You were held hostage in Gaza for 51 days. your husband Keith has now been a hostage for over 14 months. You have been speaking out nonstop advocating for his freedom, for the freedom of all of the hostages who remain in Gaza. Do you feel like your voice is being heard? You know, I can feel when I talk to people that they're listening to me,

but Keith is still there and the girls that I was with that are they are still there. And all the hostages, so I'm talking. for them and I do know that while I was in captivity I was thought that I thought that I was forgotten and I just hope that Keith and the hostages are keeping themselves alive and doing everything they can to keep alive because they're going to come home and we need them to come home today. Yeah. On October 7th you were in your home when the terrorists attacked. Did you have time to make it into the safe room in your home or into a neighbor's safe room? Keith and I, in the houses on Kibbutz Kvajah, come from a community that 64 people were murdered

on the 7th. Mothers were raped in front of their family. And people were burnt alive, if you can think about that, the children that hid themselves in cupboards, and there were children, two babies that were just left in a crib while they killed their parents for 17 hours. So Kvraza has had the missiles attack from Gaza for years. more than 20 years. I used to hide behind trees.

When I saw the missiles coming all the way towards me, I just pray and hide myself. And in the last maybe 10 years, they built a little shelter in every house. So Kit and I ran to a little shelter. And for the first two ones, we didn't even close the door, the window, because we don't have any time.

When the alarm comes on, then there's an explosion. So we don't even have time to turn around and closed the door. But after two, we stepped out and we saw all the missiles from Gaza going all over the country and it felt like the end of the world.

So we ran into our little shelter and closed the door and felt safe for a second. But then we understood that there's noises that we didn't hear ever before and that was Hamas terrorist, killing people already. And it's just beyond to think

how easy it was for them to come in to our community and kill people in a way like that and take Keith and I with our pajamas. Keith is 65 years old. He's an American citizen. I'm 63 and we were treated, not like humans need to be treated in such a brutal way. Every minute that I was there, I thought that I would be killed by Hamas terrorists. If it's okay, I want to ask you just a little bit more about that. You all, I know you were put into actually your vehicle and Terrace drove your vehicle into Gaza. Was it just you and Keith and the terrace in the car? Were there other individuals taken from your kibbutz in that vehicle?

Keith and I were in our little shelter for four hours, and maybe an hour before we were taken from the Hamas terrorist. We heard the Arabic from outside, and then we heard them walking in our house, shooting the house, you know, there's bullets where I was standing while they tried to kill me. And what saved our lives is Keith put his head on his knees and his head and his hands on his head. And they took us in such a brutal way. They tore Keith's shirt. They pushed him. They broke his ribs and they shot his hand. And they took us in Keith's car while a Hamas terrorist was with a knife in front of my eye, in front of my eyes. face and one was with a gun in front of Keith and I face all the way to Gaza while the people

in Gaza welcomed us by clapping their hands, shooting in the air. It was a party for them. They knew we coming while Keith and I was shaking and did not understand what are we doing in Gaza with our pajamas. We're innocent people. We're peacemakers. We want good for everybody. And you know, Keith, as American, grew up in North Carolina Chapel Hill. His mom was waiting for him. She just passed away a couple of days ago. She was 97 years old, and I'll never forget in Gaza. Kit looked at me and he said, the first thing I want to do when I get out of you is to go and hug my mom.

So it's been a very difficult week for me, standing at the grave of his mom. while he wasn't there, while he is underneath the ground with terrorists. It's hard to comprehend, really. It's been difficult. I know when you got into Gaza, you all were immediately taken underground into the tunnels. What were those conditions there? The worst, the worst. I shaked while I was walking down.

And one of the tunnels, Kit and I were moved 13. times and one of the times it were taken underneath the ground and the Hamas Terrace just left us there. They left us there to die. I'm lucky to be sitting here alive. They didn't even give us food and they didn't leave us with hardly any water. And we were there for more than a couple of days until one of the times Kit looked at me and he said that he feels that he can't breathe and I looked at him and I could see.

And that's exactly what I felt when nearly died there. and then while he was lying down, I said to him, just try and breathe. I couldn't even look at him to see his chest going up and down because I was scared that I would see him dead. How did you survive that? I don't know, but I want to tell you that I touched death. And that's one of the hardest things in earth. While we were lying there, I was trying to think,

what is death going to feel like? Am I going to die before Keith? and just prayed that I die first because I did not want to see Keith suffer. The worst for me in Gaza was when they tortured Keith and they tortured the girls. The worst. Do you mind if I asked you to expound upon that?

Are you comfortable speaking to what that looked like? Of course. I was there. I saw everything. I felt everything. I saw the good. coming back after one of the girls that was touched. These are other Israeli hostages. Yes. And you know, they're young, the girls, and they've never ever been touched.

And after the Hamas terrorist did whatever they wanted to us, to the girls, and touched them. They just had to smile after that happened as if nothing happened. And they wanted to just run away or vanish. but they couldn't. And I had to hide myself crying because all I wanted to do was cry. I tried to protect them, but I couldn't. They didn't let me.

And for me to see these girls been tortured and touched, and Keith tortured and touched, while I just had to try and not cry or scream. One of the times they took Keith and they shaved him looking like an Arab and he came out and he wanted to cry

because he sat there like he's not a human being and had to let this terrorist to everything he wanted to get. Kid 65 years old. One of the girls, they beat her up into pieces. They handcuffed her and they put a blanket over her and they beat her and beat her while I heard everything. And I wanted to scream. And when she came back, she sat,

on the floor next to me. She was shaking and crying like a baby. She was red all over. And I couldn't cry. And I couldn't hugger because they didn't let me. Were you all allowed to speak to one another, to encourage each other, to share words? Most of the time in Gaza, all I did

was lying down on a filthy, dirty mattress, if there was a mattress, sometimes just on a yoga mattress. and looking at the ceiling and just praying that the ceiling won't fall on me because all the missiles that were going from Aza towards Israel came out of those buildings

and the building shaked. We weren't allowed to talk. We weren't allowed to whisper. Only sometimes they let us whisper. So we had to just keep quiet all the time. We weren't allowed to stand. We weren't allowed to move.

You know, when I got to just. out of the, I had infection in my stomach, I lost 10 kilos and I had to lean on somebody when I walked. I was so weak and one of the times Keith had to go to the bathroom and he tried to get up from the mattress from the floor and he fell. I'll never forget that. And that was the moment that I started hiding food for Keith because we hardly got any food and he was losing weight. I lost 10 kilos in 51 days. Wow.

What did you say to Keith the day that you learned you were going to be released, but he was not? I looked at Keith in the eyes and hugged him and said to him, you'll be strong for me and I'll be strong for you. And I think that was the most clever thing that I could have done because I know it's keeping me and I'm sure that it's keeping Keith. and he's doing everything he can to stay alive. Do you allow yourself to dream about the day he's released?

Of course. I have to. Yeah. I have to. I can't even, well, you know, my heart will explode. I will scream. I will jump into the air. And, wow, it's just going to be, wow, it'll be, I don't know, I'll dance.

I'm sure that I'll dance and scream. But you know, one of the times when we did separate from the girls that we were with, we didn't know if we'll ever see them again. Just like I didn't know if I'll ever see Keith again. I didn't know where they're going to take me. They're going to kill me or rape me. So when we did separate from the girls, I remember saying to them, when we see each other in Israel, we're going to scream. Have those girls been freed yet? No, they're still in Gaza.

So we're going to scream. I'm going to have quite a few people to scream when they come back. One of them is my daughter's best friend, Emily. She's from Kibbutz Kvvvv and Doran are from Kvvvv. I know them. Wow. What is your message to Americans? Keith is, of course, an American.

What would you say to his fellow Americans? That my life and Keith life and my family, life and lots of families in Israel have been taken away. We need to be free to live. Everybody in this world needs to live and to live a good world, just like Americans live. And going through what I went through, that was hell, and knowing that Keith and the girls and the boys that are still there, are lying underneath the ground, 40 meters without any oxygen, starving and begging and screaming to get out of there. And just trying to think who is going to be the next one.

To be raped, to be touched, to be starved, to be thirsty, to be scrimped at, to be beaten at. It just breaks my heart. Nobody in this whole world nobody should go through what I went through and what the hostages are going through.

Aviva, thank you for being willing to share your story. Thank you for your courage and being willing to speak out. I just want to say, one more three. Please. I'm just a person with the heart and Keith is the most sweetest person in earth and I know that him too and me too want good for the good people in Gaza for me to think about mothers having babies in tents and older people trying to get themselves from a dirty mattress in a tent in Gaza for a year and two months. That's really bad. Israel and the whole region

and the whole world should be a better place to live. I hope you all enjoyed that conversation with Aviva Segal. If you want to watch it or share the video as well, it's also posted on the Daily Signals YouTube. But now let's go ahead and listen to the conversation that I have the opportunity to have with Yarden Gonen and Amit Levy

as they talk about their siblings that are both still hostage in Gaza. Yarden, Ahmed, thank you both so much for being here. I wish it was under very different circumstances, and I know that you all wish that the thing you have in common that brings you here that you didn't have in common. You both have younger sisters who are hostages in Gaza. And I am just to say sorry is that it doesn't cut it. But I'm really honored just to get to hear from you all, to hear from your hearts today.

So I want to begin just by asking you to share a little bit about October 7th. Your sister Womi was attending the Nova Music Festival. And you got a phone call from her. What did she say when you first answered that phone call on October 7th? I must say, first of all, that I'm used to getting phone calls from Romi when she's attending parties or festivals. because she's always want to share the feelings that she's having in the festivals to show me around, to let me know who's the DJ, stuff like that,

or sometimes because the police is closing the festival, she's asking me what to do, and then calling to say that the police left and everything is okay, so she doesn't need help. So when she called me, I wasn't surprised, but I was sleeping because it was very early in the morning, so I quir in the phone and I didn't answer at first. But after a few seconds, I figured out that if she's calling while I'm sleeping and we're on the same time zone, so maybe something's wrong and she needs help.

So I answered with my eyes closed underneath the blanket and asked her if everything is okay because I'm sleeping. And then another weird thing happened because she said, no, I need your help. And this is not something that Omi usually does. She's very independent. She loves to do things on her own. She's not asking for help, especially if she knows that I'm sleeping. She didn't want to bother me, usually. But when she said that everything is wrong and she needs help,

For me, it was like a red flag. I was scared. I sat in my bed immediately and I said, okay, what's wrong? What is going on? And from that moment, I had on and off conversations with her on the phone and also in WhatsApp for four and a half hours. So mostly my mom and I spoke with her, accompanied her during that morning, but also my dad a little bit. So we know almost everything that happened to her that morning. And we tried to help.

We tried to navigate her through what we thought was best, but we didn't understand the situation properly. Yeah. And also she didn't. But we tried our best. And we had like brief 10 minutes of pure. I don't know how to say. but pure rest or like we felt yeah relief that we thought that everything is behind her because a friend of hers and her best friend that was with her on the nova festival came to rescue them

and she called to say that and we were like oh my god amazing everything is okay we're gonna see you soon we'll meet you later on this day my mom was driving towards her to pick her up but 10 minutes after everything changed and she called my mom to say that they were ambushed and the driver is dead. Her best friend was shot and she's not answering anymore and then she said that she was shot herself on her arm and if no one would come quickly, I'll bleed to death.

And I think that that is the sentence that keeps on repeating in my head that my mom heard it. Yeah. No mom should hear that sentence from her daughter. Do you remember what the last thing was that you said to mom? Yeah. I spoke to her after she called my dad to let him know that she was rescued. They hung up the phone and I called her immediately and she was crying and hysterical.

And she said that that was the worst hour hours of her life. And she doesn't know how she will recover from that. And I said, Rami, you're one of the strongest women I know. Everything will be okay. You're heading home. We'll meet today. We scheduled to meet on Sunday. But I told her, we're not waiting to tomorrow.

We're meeting today. And we had like two, three minutes talking. And at the end of it, she said, thank you. I'm so grateful that I have you in my life. and I love you so much and we will meet in a few hours and I said I love you so much you're the best thing that happened to me and don't worry we'll meet soon and ever since it's been to 430 days over 14 months um it for you your sister namma was serving in the Israeli military on October 14 or excuse me on October 7th.

When when did you learn that she had been taken as a hostage? Pretty early on that day. And Amma was, she just started her service. Like every Israeli 18 or 19 year old citizens, she just started. And so we didn't even know who she had. has by her side who are her friends who are her commanders we didn't know anything the last time i saw nama was on october fourth evening uh wednesday evening when she had the ceremony over her course and then on thursday she was she started serving uh wow and uh thursday evening she arrived

and on Saturday around 11 a.m. or noon, we got phone calls from family members and at the end, me and my other sister, we saw the video, the very famous video of Nama being dragged brutally by her hair from the back of a jeep to the front. And I know that many families, including Yordan's family, thought maybe it's their family. member and I wish I would be able to lie to myself when I saw that video and say maybe it's not Nama but when we saw it we it was very very obvious to whoever knows namah that it's her and so pretty early on October 7th we we understood not what's going on nationally but at least for for Nama and since then it's really been a a roller coaster for for our family for so many families and especially for these young girls and for all the 100 hostages that are still being held under unbearable

circumstances my my little sister from our understanding was injured in her leg romey in her arm and we know that they I mean we wish they they have but we understand they probably didn't get any medical care. Not even painkillers. Nothing. Of course, no Red Cross, like in any other crisis in the world that the Red Cross is straight there, no one to see them. That I think shows the sense of urgency to get them really, really fast before the upcoming winter.

Yeah. You all are here in America. advocating for their release, for all the hostages release, what is your message to the American people? I have a lot of things to say because you cannot really like, I don't know, to put it in one sentence. Yeah. Nothing. None of it. I can't describe my sister in one sentence because She's a whole world. And I truly believe that what is going on here is in some way a really hard trying of the terrorists to control the world, to control the narrative, to change the face of the world that

we know it. And these are innocent people that just are innocent people that. dragged, literally dragged, my sister and Amit sister Nama, was dragged by their hair towards Gaza by terrorists. And we, I'm sorry. Every time that I said it, I just picturing, I have like a picture that floats into my eyes. Like I'm watching my sister being abused. and I just want everyone to picture their own sister or their own loved woman in their lives

having this on her body. And I really feel that the fight to bring them back home alive is not only the fight for releasing innocent people. And it's not even releasing, it's saving them. This fight will symbolize the fight of the free world against terrorism. And if we won't act fast, maybe they won't stay alive. And then it means like the free world, let the terrorists win. And I feel like sometimes maybe in America, people tend to forget what terrorism looks like because thank God, thank God that didn't occur here since 9-11. But as long as we're letting this situation continue,

we're letting other terrorist groups to do whatever they want, wherever they want. And by releasing those hostages will mean that all of us are saying no to terrorism. Yeah. And I feel that is very much important also to our case, to my sister, Romi, to be released alive, but also to the Middle East issues. And also our bond as human beings fighting for human rights, for women's rights. For the entire world. Yeah. Yeah.

Exactly. I apologize. We have to cut this a little bit short because we have to get you all upstairs for the next interview. That's my message as well, so it's cool. Well, thank you both. I truly thank you for your time. Thank you for being willing to share. I wish we had three hours just to sit and talk. Thank you so much for giving us the time and for being so empathetic. Oh my gosh. It means a lot. And it's an issue. It's weird even to call an issue. It's not as human beings that I'm really passionate about. So thank you. But you're raising your voice for them. So thank you for that. I hope so. We all have to do our party. With that, we're going to leave it right there for this bonus episode of the Daily Signal podcast.

If you would, take a minute to leave us a five-star rating and review. If you enjoyed the show today, we would love to hear your thoughts on not just what you thought about this show, but in general, have you enjoyed the Daily Signal podcast this year? And don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss out on brand new shows. Have a great rest of your week. Enjoy, hopefully, time that you're getting to spend with your family in this Christmas season. and in this season of Hanukkah. We'll be right back here with you

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