2023-12-11 23:19:38
In 20 years of treating trauma victims, the director of the psychiatric service in Tel Aviv who treats Israeli hostages released by Hamas says she has “never seen anything like this.”
“Whether physical, sexual, mental or psychological, the abuse suffered by those who returned is simply terrible,” says Renana Eitan, from the Sourasky-Ichilov hospital center.
Of the approximately 240 hostages taken by force to Gaza during the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 114 – Israelis or dual nationals – were released, 14 of whom are being treated in this hospital.
Some say they were drugged and doctors believe their captors made them take benzodiazepines, drugs that slow brain activity and have a calming effect.
“It is sometimes difficult to deal with young children or teenagers and they knew that by drugging them they would be kept quiet,” explains Renana Eitan.
“For a few weeks, a little girl was even given ketamine,” a powerful anesthetic that produces a dissociative effect between body and mind. “Doing that to a child is unthinkable,” she says indignantly.
Former hostages continue to suffer from dissociative states: “They know they are here at the medical center and the next moment they think they are with Hamas once more.”
Their captors subjected some hostages to psychological pressure, for example making one of them believe that his wife was dead, even though she was still alive in Israel.
Minors were separated from their families and had to watch very violent videos. One woman claims to have been kept in total darkness with other people for four days.
“They became psychotic, had hallucinations,” explains Ms. Eitan.
There have been reports of self-harm and some returnees have suicidal thoughts. “But that’s our mission: to make sure that things like this don’t happen,” she says.
137 hostages are still in the hands of Hamas.
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