The Daily - Hamas Took Her, and Still Has Her Husband

Episode Date: March 29, 2024

Warning: this episode contains descriptions of violence.It’s been nearly six months since the Hamas-led attacks on Israel, when militants took more than 200 hostages into Gaza.In a village called Nir Oz, near the border, one quarter of residents were either killed or taken hostage. Yocheved Lifshitz and her husband, Oded Lifshitz, were among those taken.Today, Yocheved and her daughter Sharone tell their story.Guest: Yocheved Lifshitz, a former hostage.Sharone Lifschitz, daughter of Yocheved and Oded Lifshitz.Background reading: Yocheved Lifshitz was beaten and held in tunnels built by Hamas for 17 days.For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

I can't remember the word, but do you know the kind of fungi connection between trees in the forest? How do you call it? Mycelium. Mycelium. Mycelium. You know, I just somehow feel that we are connected by this kind of infinite wave of mycelium. We are so bound together. And I don't think we really realized that until all this happened.

It's quite hard to explain to me in a sense, because, you know, some people would say, oh, I'm so hoping your father will come and then everything will be okay. Bring us up together. Share all their resources over 75 years. Grow into each other. Fight endlessly with each other. Love and hate each other, but somehow stay together and their children will then meet and marry and make grandchildren. And there's so many levels of connection.

And I'm sitting here in the room and I see their faces, some of them, you know. And we are incredibly, it's hard to explain how much these people are missing from our kind of forest ground. From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi, and this is The Daily. It's been nearly six months since Hamas attacked Israel on October 7th and took more than 200 people into Gaza. One of the hardest hit places was a village called Nir Oz, near the border with Gaza.

One quarter of its residents were either killed or taken hostage. Yocheved Lifshitz was one of those hostages. And so was her husband, Oded Lifshitz. Yeheved was eventually released. Oded was not. Today, the story of one family at the center of the war. It's Friday, March 29th. Okay, here we go. Okay.

Okay. Good morning, Yochavid. Good morning, Sharon. Good morning. Good morning, Yochavit. Good morning, Sharon. Good morning. Good morning. Yochavit, could you identify yourself for me, please? Tell me your name, your age, and where you're from. Yochavit, you can introduce yourself. What's your name?

How old are you? Where are you from? My name is Yochavit Leifschitz. I'm 85 years old. מה את? מאיפה את? קוראים לי יוחבד ליפשיץ, אני בת 85, ילידת 1938, בגיל 18, הגעתי לקיבוץ נרעוז, עם גרעין,

שהחלטנו להקים יישוב חדש, על שטח מאוד חולי, וקרוב לרצועת עזה. a new settlement on a very sick area, close to the Gaza Strip. Okay, I'll translate. My name is Yocheved Levshitz. I'm 85 years old. I was born in 1938. When I was 18, I arrived at Kibbutz Neroz.

I came along with a group of people who decided to come and form and build a community on a very sandy territory, which was close to the Gaza Strip. And my name is Sharon Lifshitz. I am 52 years old. I was raised in Kibbutz Niroz by my mom and dad, so I lived there until I was 20, and I lived for the last 30-something years in London.

And Sharon, what do you have next to you? Next to me I have a poster of my dad in both English and Hebrew, and it says Oded Lifshitz, 83. And below that, it says, Bring him home now. And it's a photo where I always feel the love

because he is looking at me, and there's a lot of love in it, in his eyes. And why did you want to bring him here today, Sharon? Because he should be talking himself. And why did you want to bring him here today, Sharon? have been a story of my mom and dad sitting here and telling their story. The story of Aded and Yocheved began before they ever met, in Poland in the 1930s. Anti-Semitism was surging in Europe, and their families decided to flee to Palestine. Yocheved's in 1933, the year Hitler came to power, and Aded's a year later.

Jehoved remembers a time near the end of the war when her father received news from back home in Poland. He was deeply religious, a cantor in a synagogue, and he gathered his family around him to share what he'd learned. around him to share what he learned.

And he said, we don't have a family anymore. They've all been murdered. And he explained to us why there is no God. If there was a God, he would have protected my family. And this means that there is no God. And suddenly we stopped going to synagogue. We used to go every Saturday. So it was a deep crisis for him.

The shock and the trauma were very deep. Argentina, abstention. Soviet Union, yes. United Kingdom, abstain. Yocheved's father lived long enough to see a state established for his children. The UN resolution of 1947 paved the way for a new country for Jews. And the next spring, Israel declared its independence. Youhavid remembers listening to the news on the radio with her parents. The General Assembly of the United Nations has made its decision on Palestine.

We had a country. So now we'll have somebody who's protecting us. It's a country for the people, to rebuild the people. This was the feeling we had. In other words, if God could not protect you, this nation maybe could. She actually asks, if God couldn't protect you, then maybe the state could protect you. maybe could. Yes.

But the next day, it was already sad. Israel was immediately forced to defend itself when its Arab neighbors attacked. Israel won that war, but its victory came at a great cost to the Palestinian Arabs living there. More than 700,000 either fled or were expelled from their homes.

Many became refugees in Gaza in the south. Suddenly, Yocheved and Oded saw themselves differently from their parents. Finally, Yocheved and Oded saw themselves differently from their parents. Not as minorities in someone else's country, but as pioneers in a country of their own, ready to build it and defend it. They moved to the south, near the borderline with Gaza. It was there, in a kibbutz, where they met for the first time. The first time I met him, he was 16 and I was 17.

And we didn't really have this connection happening. But when we arrived at Neroz, that's where some sort of a connection started to happen. And he was younger than I am by a year and a half. So at first I thought, he's a kid. But for some reason he insisted. Oded really insisted. And later it turned out he was right.

What was it about him that made you fall in love with him? He was cute. He was a cute kid. He was a cute boy. What's so funny? He was a philosopher. He wrote a lot. He worked in agriculture.

He was this cute boy. He was only 20. Think about it. And then I married him, and he brought two things with him. He brought a dog, and he brought a cactus. And since then, we've been growing a huge field of cacti for over 64 years. What did it feel like to be starting a new life together in this new country? What was the feeling of that? We were euphoric.

And what did you think you were building together? We were euphoric. And what did you think you were building together? We thought we were building a kibbutz. We were building a family, we were having babies. That was the vision. And we were thinking that we were building a socialist state, an equal state. And at first it was a very isolated place. There were only two houses and shacks and a lot of sand.

And little by little we turned that place into a heaven. Building the new state meant cultivating the land. Aded plowed the fields, planting potatoes and carrots, wheat and cotton. Yocheved was in charge of the turkeys and worked in the kitchen, cooking meals for the kibbutz. They believed that the best way to live was communally, so they shared everything, money, food, even child rearing. After long days in the fields, Adet would venture outside the kibbutz to the boundary line with Gaza and drink beer with Brazilian peacekeepers

from the UN and talk with Palestinians from the villages nearby. They talked about politics and life in Arabic, a language Aded spoke fluently. These were not just idle conversations. Aded knew that for Israel to succeed, it would have to figure out how to live side by side with its Arab neighbors. He really did not believe in black and white, that

somebody is the bad guy and somebody is the good guy, but that there is humanistic values that you can live in. Sharon, what was your father like? Subtly?

Tell her. My father was a tall man and a skinny man. And he was, he is, first of all, he is. He is a man who had very strong opinion and very well-formed opinion. He read extensively. He thought deeply about matters. And he studied the piano, but as he said, was never that great or fast enough for classical.

But he always played the piano. He would play a lot of Israeli songs, he would play Russian songs, he would play French chansons. And he had this way of just moving from one song to the next. Making it into a kind of pattern. And it was, it's really the soundtrack of our life. My father playing the piano. Another side was he was a peace activist. Another side was he was a peace activist. He was not somebody who just had ideals about building bridges between nations.

He was always on the left side of the political map and he actioned it. I remember growing up and going very regularly, almost weekly, to demonstrations. I would go regularly with my father on Saturday night to demonstrations in Tel Aviv. I would sit on his shoulders. He would be talking to all his activist friends. He will be talking to all his activist friends. The smoke will rise from the cigarettes and I will sit up there and smoke. But somehow we really grew up in that fight for peace. Yocheved and Aded's formal fight for peace began after the Arab-Israeli war of 1967.

Israel had captured new territory, including the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, and the Gaza Strip. That brought more than a million Palestinians under Israeli occupation. Aded immediately began to speak against it. Israel already had its land inside borders that much of the world had agreed to. In his view, taking more was wrong. It was no longer about Jewish survival. So when Israeli authorities began quietly pushing Bedouin Arabs off their land in the Sinai Peninsula. Aded took up the cause.

He helped file a case in the Israeli courts to try to stop it. And he and Yocheved worked together to draw attention to what was going on. Yocheved was a photographer, so she took pictures showing destroyed buildings and bulldozed land. took pictures showing destroyed buildings and bulldozed land. Aded then put her photographs on cardboard and drove around the country showing them to people everywhere. They became part of a growing peace movement that was becoming a force helping shape Israeli politics. Israel eventually returned the Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in 1982.

Whenever there is a movement towards reconciliation with our neighbors, it's almost like your ability to live here, you know, your life force gets stronger. And in a way, you can think of their, kind of, the arch of their activism as being a response to that. the arch of their activism as being a response to that. And why did he and your mother take up that fight, the cause of the land? Why do you think that was what he fought for? My father, he had a very developed sense of justice,

He had a very developed sense of justice and he always felt that had we returned those lands at that point, we could have reached long-term agreement at that point. Then we would have been in a very different space now. I know that in 2019, for example, he wrote a column where he said that when the Palestinians of Gaza have nothing to lose, we lose big time. He believed that the way of living in this part of the world is to share the place, to reach agreement, to work with the other side towards agreements. And he was not somebody who just had ideals about building bridges between nations. Two weeks before he was taken hostage, he still drove Palestinians that are ill to reach hospital in Israel and in East Jerusalem. That was something that meant a lot to him. I think he really believed in shared humanity and in doing what you can. Do you remember the last conversation you had with your father? I don't have a clear memory

which one it was. It's funny. A lot of things I forgot since. A lot of things have gone last conversation. The last thing he said was, there is a war. And he was shot in the hand,

and he was taken out, and I was taken out. and I was taken out, I couldn't say goodbye to him. And what was done to us was done. We'll be right back. Yochavit, the last thing Added said was, there's a war. Tell me about what happened that day from the beginning. That morning, there was very heavy shelling on Neroz. We could hear gunfire.

And we looked outside, and Oded told me, there are a lot of terrorists outside. We didn't even have time to get dressed. I was still wearing my nightgown. He was wearing very few clothes. I remember him trying to close the door to the safe room, but it didn't work. He wasn't successful in closing it.

And then five terrorists walked in. They shot him through the safe room door. He was bleeding from his arm. He said to me, Yoche, I'm injured. And then he fainted. He was dragged out on the floor. I didn't know if he was alive. I thought he was dead.

After that, I was taken in my nightgown. I was led outside. I was placed on a small moped, and I was taken to Gaza. And I was taken to Gaza. And we were driving over bumpy terrain that had been plowed. And it didn't break my ribs, but it was very painful. And I could see that the gate that surrounds the Gaza Strip was broken, and we were driving right through it.

And as we were heading in, I could see so many people. They were yelling, kill the Jews, slaughter the Jews. And people were hitting me with sticks, It's Bach El Yehud, kill the Jews, slaughter the Jews. And people were hitting me with sticks, and though the drivers on the moped tried to protect me, it didn't help. What were you thinking at the time? What was in your mind? I was thinking, I'm being taken, I'm being kidnapped. I didn't know where to, but this decision I had in my head was that I'm going to take photographs in my mind and capture everything I'm seeing

so that when I, or if and when I am released, I'll have what to tell. when I am released, I'll have what to tell. When I came to a stop, we were in a village that's near Neroz. It's called Chirbet Chaza. We came in on the moped, but I was transferred into a private car from there, and I was threatened that my hand would be cut off unless I hand over my watch and my ring. And I didn't have a choice, so I took my watch off, and I took my ring off, and I handed it to them. Was it your wedding ring? Yes, it was my wedding ring.

After that, they led me to a big hangar where the entrance to the tunnel was. And I started walking, and the entrance was at ground level. I started walking, and the entrance was at ground level. But as you walk, you're walking down a slope, and you're walking and walking about 40 meters deep underground. And the walls are damp, and the soil is damp. And at first I was alone. I didn't know that other people had been taken too. But then more hostages came, and we were walking together through the tunnels.

Many of whom were from kibbutz near Oz. These were our people. They were abducted, but still alive. And we spoke quietly, and we spoke very little. But as we were walking, everybody started telling a story of what happened to him. And that created a very painful picture. There were appalling stories about murder. People had left behind a partner.

A friend arrived who about an hour or two hours before had her husband murdered and he died in her hands. and he died in her hands. It was a collection of broken-up people brought together. So you were piecing together the story of your community and what had happened from these snapshots of tragedies that you were looking at all around you as you were walking. What's the photograph you'll remember most from that day? A child.

It would be a girl, a four-year-old girl. People kept telling her, walk, walk, walk. And we tried to calm her down, and her mom tried to carry her on her arms. It was the most difficult sight to see, a child inside those tunnels. What were you feeling at that moment, Yochavet? What were your feelings at that moment, Yochavet? Kishor. Very difficult.

Where did they lead you, you and your community from Neroz? They led us to this chamber, a room that they had prepared in advance. There were mattresses there, and that's where we were told to sit. I saw people sitting on the mattresses, bent down, their heads down between their hands. They were broken. But we hardly spoke. Everybody was inside their own world with themselves, closed inside his own personal shock.

Yoheved was without her glasses, her hearing aids, or even her shoes. She said she spent most days lying down on one of the mattresses that had been put out for the hostages. Sometimes her captors would let her and others walk up and down the tunnels to stretch their legs. She said she was given a cucumber, spreading cheese, and a piece of pita bread every day to eat. They had a little bit of coffee in the morning and water all day long. One day, a Hamas leader came to the room where she and others were being held. She said she believes it was Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, who is believed to be the architect of the October 7th attack. Two other hostages who were held with Yeheved

also identified the man as Sinwar, and an Israeli military spokesman said he found the accounts reliable. He came accompanied with a group of other men. He just made rounds between the hostages, I suppose. He spoke in Hebrew, and he told us not to worry, and soon there's going to be a deal, and we'll be out. And others told me, don't speak.

And I said, what is there for me to be afraid of? The worst already happened. Worst thing, I'll be killed. I want to say something. And I spoke my mind. I told Sinoir, why have you done what you just did to all the same people who have always helped you? He didn't answer me. He just turned around and they walked off.

Were you afraid to ask him why Hamas did what it did? To challenge him? I wasn't afraid. I was angry about the whole situation. It was against every thought and thinking we ever had. It was against our desire to reach peace, to be attentive

and help our neighbors the way we always wanted to help our neighbors. I was very angry, but he ignored what I said and he just turned his back and walked away. And this entire time,

you had no answers about Aded. Nothing. What was the hardest day for you, the hardest moment in captivity? It's when I got sick. I got sick with diarrhea and vomiting for about four days,

and I had no idea how this will end. It was a few very rough days. And probably because of that, they decided to free me. They didn't tell me they they decided to free me. They didn't tell me they were going to release me. They just told me and another girl, come follow us.

They gave us galabia gowns to wear and scarves to wear over our heads so maybe they'll think that we are Arab women. And only as we were walking and we started going through corridors and ladders and climbing up, we were told that we're going home.

I was very happy to be going out, but my heart ached so hard for those who were staying behind. I was hoping that many others would follow me. You go with the swans? Shalom. Shalom. There was a video that was made of the moment you left your captors, and it seemed to show that you were shaking a hand, saying shalom to them.

Do you remember doing that? I said goodbye to him. It was a friendly man. He was a medic. So when we said goodbye, I shook his hand. Le shalom, to goodbye. What did you mean when you said that? I meant for peace. Shalom in the sense of peace. An extraordinary moment as a freed Israeli hostage shakes hands with a Hamas terrorist who held her captive.

I literally saw my mom on CNN, on my phone, on the way to the airport. And it was the day before I was talking to my aunt and she said, I just want to go to Gaza and pull them out of the earth. I just want to pull them out of the earth and take them. And it really felt like that, that pull them out of the earth. I just want to pull them out of the earth and take them. And it really felt like that, that she came out of the earth. And when she shook the hand of the Hamas person, it just made me smile because it was so her to see the human in that person and to acknowledge him as a human being.

I arrived in the hospital at about 5.30 a.m. My mom was asleep in the bed, and she was just, my mom slept really peacefully. She has a really quiet way of sleeping. And I just sat there and it was just like a miracle to have her back with us. It was just incredible because not only was she back, but it was her. I don't know how to explain it, but while they were away, we knew so little. We were pretty sure she didn't survive it. The whole house burned down totally,

so other homes we could see if there was blood on the walls or blood on the floor. But in my parents' home, everything was gone. Everything. And we just didn't know anything. And out of that nothingness came my mom back. It was only when she got to the hospital that Yocheved learned the full story of what happened on October 7th. Nir Oz had been mostly destroyed.

Many of her friends had been murdered. No one knew what had happened to Aded. Yocheved believed he was dead. But there wasn't time to grieve. The photograph she had taken in her mind needed to be shared. Yocheved knew who was still alive in the tunnels. So she and her son called as many families as they could. The family of the kibbutz's history teacher, of one of its nurses,

of the person who ran its art gallery, to tell them that they were still alive, captive in Gaza. And then, in November, came a hostage release. More than 100 people came out. The family was certain that Adet was gone, but Sharon decided to make some calls anyway. She spoke to one former neighbor, then another, and finally, almost by chance, she found someone who'd seen her father.

They shared a room together in Gaza before he'd gotten ill and was taken away. Sharon and her brothers went to where Yochavid was staying to tell her the news. She just couldn't believe it, actually. It was as if in this great telenovela of our life, at one season he was left unconscious on the floor and the second season open and he is in a little room in Gaza with another woman that we know. She couldn't believe it. She was very, very, very excited, also really worried. You know, my father was a very active and strong man. And if it happened 10 years ago, I would say, of course, he would survive it. He would talk to them in Arabic, he will manage the situation, he would have agency.

But we know he was injured and it makes us very, very worried about the condition in which he is surviving there. And I think that the fear of how much suffering the hostages are going through really makes you unable to function at moments. Yochavid, the government has been doing a military operation since October in Gaza. You have been fighting very hard since October to free the hostages, including a dead. I wonder how you see the government's military operation.

Is it something that harms your cause or potentially helps it? The only thing that will bring them back are agreements. And what is happening is that there are many soldiers who have been killed, and there is an ongoing war, and the hostages are still in captivity. So it's only by reaching an agreement that all of the hostages will be released. Do you believe that Israel is close to reaching an agreement? I don't know. You told us that after the Holocaust,

your father gathered your family together to tell you that God did not save you. It was a crisis for him. I'm wondering if this experience, October 7th, your captivity, challenged your faith in a similar way. No, I don't think it changed me. I'm still the same person with the same beliefs and opinions. But how should I say it? What the Hamas did was to ruin a certain belief in human beings.

I didn't think that one can reach that level that isn't that much higher than a beast. But my opinion and my view of there still being peace and reaching an arrangement stayed the same. You still believe in peace? Yes.

Why do you believe that? Because I'm hoping that a new generation of leaders will rise. People who act in transparency, who speak the truth. People who are honest, the way Israel used to be, and that will return to be like we once were. I go to many rallies and demonstrations and I meet many people in many places. And a large part of those people

still believe in reaching an arrangement, in peace, and for there to be no war. And I still hope that this is what we're going to be able to have here. Hashem! Hashem! Hashem!arshaab! Harshaab! Harshaab! Bring them home! Bring them home now! Bring them home now! Bring them home now! Bring them home now!

Bring them home now! Bring them home now! Bring them home now! Yocheved is now living in a retirement home in the suburbs of Tel Aviv. Five other people around her age from near Oz live there too. One is also a released hostage. She hasn't been able to bring herself to go back to the kibbutz. The life she built there with Aded is gone. Her photographs, his records, the piano. And the kibbutz has become something else now, a symbol instead of a home. It is now buzzing with journalists and politicians. For now, Yocheva doesn't know if she'll ever go back.

And when Sharon asked her, she said, let's wait for dad. So I'm today sitting in this assisted living, surrounded by the same company, just expecting Oded, waiting for Oded to come back, and then each and every one of us will be rebuilding his own life together and renewing it. What are you doing to make it a home for Oded?

We have a piano. We were given a piano, a very old one. It was a beautiful sound. And it's good. Oded is very sensitive to the sound. He has absolute hearing. And I'm just hoping for him to come home and start playing the piano. Do you believe hoping for him to come home and start playing the piano.

Do you believe that Aded will come home? I'd like to believe, but there's a difference between believing and wanting. I want to believe that he'll be back and playing music. I don't think his opinions are going to change. He's going to be disappointed by what happened. And I hope he's going to hold on to the same beliefs. His music is missing from our home. I know that my father always felt that we haven't given peace a chance. That was his opinion.

And I think it's very hard to speak for my father because maybe he has changed. Like my mom said, she said, I hope he hasn't changed. I haven't changed. But the truth is we don't know. And we don't know the story. We don't know how the story, my father is ending or just beginning. But I think you have to hold on to humanistic values at this point. You have to know what you don't want. I don't want more of this. This is hell.

This is hell for everybody. So this is no, you know. And then I believe that peace is also grey and it's not glorious and it's not simple. It's kind of a lot of hard work. You have to reconcile and give up a lot. And it's only worth doing that for peace. After weeks of negotiations, talks over another hostage release and ceasefire have reached an impasse. over another hostage release and ceasefire have reached an impasse. The sticking points include the length of the ceasefire and the identity and number of Palestinian prisoners

to be exchanged for the hostages. Terima kasih. We'll be right back. Here's what all two should know today. We'll be right back. multi-trillion dollar crypto industry. Bankman Freed, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX, was convicted of wire fraud, conspiracy, and money laundering last November. Prosecutors accused him of stealing more than $10 billion from customers to finance political contributions, venture capital investments, and other extravagant purchases. At the sentencing, the judge pointed to testimony from Bankman-Fried's trial, saying that his appetite for extreme risk and failure to take responsibility for his crimes amount to a, quote, risk that this man will be in a position to do something very bad in the future. will be in a position to do something very bad in the future. Today's episode was produced by Lindsay Garrison and Muj Zaydi,

with help from Ricky Nowetzki and Shannon Lin. It was edited by Michael Benoit, fact-checked by Susan Lee, contains original music by Marian Lozano, Dan Powell, Diane Wong, Alicia Baitu, and Oded Liefschitz. It was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. The translation was by Gabi Sobelman. Special thanks to Menachem Rosenberg, Gershom Gorenberg, Gabi Sobelman, Yotam Shabtai, and Patrick Kingsley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. That's it for The Daily. I'mrina tavernissi see you on monday