Painful surgical operations and passing notes: How Israeli siblings survived Hamas captivity
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Mr Itay Regev, 18, being reunited with his sister Maya Regev, 21, shortly after his arrival at Soroka Medical Center in Beersheba, Israel, after being held hostage by Hamas.
PHOTO: REUTERS
JERUSALEM - Israeli Maya Regev lay badly wounded in a nondescript house in Gaza, her leg mangled from a gunshot, under orders not to make a sound.
The 21-year-old begged her captors to let her younger brother Itay, who was being held in a room nearby, join her while the bandages on her leg were replaced.
It was days after Hamas gunmen rampaged through southern Israel in a killing and hostage-taking spree on Oct 7 that triggered the war in Gaza.
The siblings were shot and wounded as they tried to flee an outdoor music festival turned killing field. They were thrown into a pickup and taken away with their friend Omer Shem Tov.
“Itay and Omer walk in. And they began removing the bandages. And I am screaming and Omer is holding my hand and covering my mouth,” a tearful Ms Regev recalled during an interview with Uvda, a current-affairs programme on Israel’s Channel 12 TV.
Mr Regev, 18, told how days earlier a “scared and sweaty doctor” painfully removed the bullet from his leg without anaesthesia, while he was instructed to remain quiet or be killed.
Ms Regev’s injury was more severe, and she says she was eventually sneaked into a Gaza hospital. Her dangling foot was reattached in surgery, but sideways, at an unnatural angle. She gave her interview in a wheelchair, her leg in a cast.
The Regev siblings were among more than 100 hostages freed in a week-long ceasefire in late November. Mr Shem Tov remains in captivity with nearly 130 others. Some have been declared dead in absentia by the Israeli authorities.
Ms Regev said that while being treated in the hospital, she was kept near another wounded Israeli hostage, Mr Guy Iluz. The two spoke about returning home – what they would do, what they would eat. But Mr Iluz died in the hospital.
“At first, I refused to believe. Before they took him away, I said I have to see, like, that it’s really him. I have the duty to go speak to his family when this is over. I’m the only person who knew what really happened to him.”
Ms Maya was also held hostage in Gaza and was released days before Mr Itay.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Mr Regev said he and Mr Shem Tov, in the meantime, were taken to a different house. They were forced to dress as Muslim women so they would not be recognised as they walked in the dark of night.
From the hospital, Ms Regev wrote her brother and Mr Shem Tov a note and asked for it to be delivered. She said she argued with her captors, demanding that she hear back.
Mr Regev received it. “They came one time with a note, a note from Maya, in which she wrote me where she is, what she is going through. She said she loves me, asked me to stay strong, for the family, for everyone,” he said.
He sent a response.
“They brought me a note that they (Itay and Omer) wrote me, and I knew it was really from them because I recognised the handwriting and my brother called me by my nickname,” Ms Regev said.
Mr Regev calls his sister “patcha”.
“It was a light, a small light in all the darkness, that I hear from my little brother and from Omer, that I understand they are OK.”
They continued corresponding.
“Those notes gave so much strength, like in the small moment that I feel a bit like I am diving into bad thoughts, I just held Maya’s note, read it like 10 times, and it would give me strength,” Mr Regev said.
Since the brief ceasefire, Israel has pushed ahead with its devastating campaign in Gaza, saying that military pressure is needed to free the remaining hostages.
Israel’s air and artillery bombardment has killed almost 22,000 people, according to the health authorities in Hamas-run Gaza, with many more feared dead in the rubble. It has also pushed nearly all its 2.3 million people from their homes.
Qatari and Egyptian mediators have been trying to broker a deal that would include a pause in the fighting and the release of more hostages.
Mr Regev was separated from his friend, only to find out later he had been included in the list of hostages to be freed. “If I had known I was going home, I can tell you that probably I wouldn’t agree to leave without Omer,” he said, adding that their story is not over yet. “Even though Maya and I are home, Omer is still there.” REUTERS
