‘Abuse, Medical Neglect, Subhuman Conditions’: New Israeli Report Details Horrors Faced by Former Hostages of Hamas

Peloni:  The true victims of intentional starvation in Gaza are the Israelis held hostage by Hamas, and flooding Gaza with food will only serve to continue fattening the already too well fed Hamas and their allies.

FDD | August 12, 2025

Starving image of the Hostage, Evyatar David. Screengrab via Youtube 

Latest Developments

  • Harrowing Details of Captivity: Israel will send a new health ministry report to the president of the Red Cross revealing the physical and mental damage suffered by 12 freed hostages previously held by Hamas in Gaza. The report, published on August 12, detailed “patterns of abuse, medical neglect, and subhuman conditions that constitute torture,” warning that there are “serious concerns that the abductees who are still being held captive are in immediate danger.” The report’s purpose was to demonstrate “to international health organizations such as the Red Cross and to countries and authorities around the world” that “the conduct of the Hamas terrorist organization clearly and deliberately violates international law.”

  • Initial Abduction and Conditions: The report found that during their initial abductions by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist organizations on October 7, 2023, the hostages were subjected to “severe violence,” including bullet and shrapnel wounds, “direct physical assault,” and attempted lynchings. Additionally, some of the former hostages reported witnessing the murders of family members, as well as the “widespread destruction” of southern Israeli communities during the October 7 atrocities. Regarding the conditions of their captivity, the hostages were held in underground tunnels for months at a time, “in tiny spaces of about two square meters at a height lower than the height of a standing person,” fed a diet that “amounted to intentional starvation,” and suffered from physical injuries, untreated respiratory and intestinal illnesses, and severe nutritional deficiency.
  • Dehumanization and Mental Illness: The former hostages reported being held in social isolation for long periods and “living under constant threat to their lives,” with several survivors recounting how their terrorist captors would hold primed grenades while counting down the seconds to an explosion, psychologically tormenting the hostages. The report found that as a result of abuse and “dehumanization” during captivity, much of the psychological and physical damage suffered by the former hostages is irreversible, leading to “functional difficulties, including limitations in walking, driving, typing, and performing basic daily activities.” The report concluded by noting the “direct connection” between the duration of captivity, the conditions the hostages were held in, and the “survivors’ ability to undergo rehabilitation processes and reintegrate into family life and society.”

FDD Expert Response

“The crimes of October 7 are not confined to that dark day. Every second Israelis are held hostage in the dungeons beneath Gaza, Hamas and other Palestinians are causing the hostages and their families unimaginable suffering, committing crimes against humanity. Though perhaps there is little humanity left to commit crimes against: The international community is undermining Israeli efforts to secure the hostages’ release and rewarding their captors and abusers by punishing Israel and pushing forward with Palestinian statehood.” — David May, Research Manager and Senior Research Analyst

“The health ministry’s report is a timely reminder of the nature of the enemy that Israel faces in Gaza: one that is driven by fanatical ideology, a culture of martyrdom, and a refusal to compromise. It also reflects very poorly on an international community that has paid lip service to the plight of the hostages in Gaza yet has done precious little to secure their release beyond chiding Israel that its military operations expose them to greater risk.” — Ben Cohen, Senior Analyst and Rapid Response Director

FDD Background and Analysis

“Palestinian Terror Organizations Release Videos of Emaciated Israeli Hostages as Witkoff, Huckabee Visit Gaza,” FDD Flash Brief

“Keir Starmer’s empty threat won’t save Gaza, it will reward the terrorists,” by Ellie Bufkin

“IDF clears Beit Hanoun, completes several operations in northern Gaza,” by Seth J. Frantzman

“‘We Know Where the Hostages Are In Some Cases’: Trump Discusses Risks of Rescue Operation for Gaza Captives,” FDD Flash Brief

August 13, 2025 | 1 Comment »

Leave a Reply

1 Comment / 1 Comment

  1. The Prime Minister of Israel
    8m
    ·
    Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech at US Independence Day Reception Hosted by NEWSMAX:
    “Thank you, Chris, and thank you, Newsmax, for helping us on the eighth front war. Seven fronts against Iran and its proxies, the eighth front—the battle for truth. And Newsmax, you have let the truth circle the globe against the lies that have circled it before and continue to do so. There’s only one way to beat the lies, and that’s with the truth. Thank you for standing up with Israel. Thank you for standing up with the truth.
    Sara will join us in a short moment, but I want to thank you for your kind words about her. She deserves every one of it and more. Every one of it and more. You know, I called this battle against Iran, I called it Rising Lion, because in the Bible, there’s a phrase that the people of Israel should rise like lions, will rise like lions. And our brave soldiers did just that. But we also have lionesses. We have lionesses in the field. And I have a lioness at home that guards not only our cubs, but fights for the people of Israel against enormous pressures, vilifications, lies. She’s just so strong and I treasure her support.
    There are a few things I want to say to you in English, but there’s something I want to say in Hebrew, because we have the Hebrew press here, so it’ll take a few minutes, and you can have running translation. It’s AI, it’s imperfect, but it, sort of can do the job…
    Did you understand that, Ambassador Huckabee? I don’t know… I follow every one of your words, you could follow every one of mine. I followed you when you said the other day that the problem in Gaza is that the, not starvation for the Palestinians, and certainly for Hamas… Hamas, you said, needs Ozempic. Well, it could be. It could be funny. But it isn’t. It’s not funny because the deliberate starvation policy, the only deliberate starvation policy that we see in Gaza is the starving of our hostages. And you can see that when you look at their captors, and you see our emaciated hostages and these corpulent guards. Guards? Tormentors.
    And that’s a way to puncture the falsehoods, because the battle, the eighth front that I was talking about is the battle to puncture the lies and bring out the truth. Israel has no starvation policy. It had and has a policy to separate the civilians from combatants, on two fronts.
    The first front is the actual battle zones. We have sent millions and millions of text messages, phone calls. This has never happened before in a war, that the army that is fighting terrorists in an urban environment calls on the civilians in enemy territory to leave, and the enemy shoots them if they try to leave. And then Israel is blamed for genocide. That’s ridiculous. It is a blatant falsehood. And one of the first and most important lies that has to be exposed. The genocidal element is Hamas. The genocidal element is the Iranian axis that openly calls for the annihilation and extermination of Israel and many Jews.
    It calls for the death of America. But people don’t understand that it begins with their attempt to destroy Israel, because we stand in their way. We’re the only force in the Middle East that fights Iran. And until recently, we were the only force in the world that fought Iran. And I very much appreciate President Trump’s bold decisions to send those B2s to help Israel fight against this common enemy. So, the first false accusation is genocide.
    The second false accusation is starvation. From the start, from the second day of the war, we said there has to be another separation between civilians and combatants, and that is that we supply humanitarian aid to the combatants [sic]. Even though we’re in a very small and tight urban space, we’ll do every effort to do so. And we did. If we had a starvation policy, now, nearly two years after the beginning of the war, everybody in Gaza would be dead. But they’re not, because that’s not our policy. Our policy is the exact opposite. We sent in two million tons, 1.9 million tons of food and medical aid into Gaza. Because that’s how we conduct the war, until recently, that is, when Hamas began to loot, rob, kill, takeover humanitarian aid. We wanted to put in our own system, American companies who will distribute the aid directly to the Palestinian civilians. Again, Hamas came in, shot their way in, created riots, created every interdiction possible, and so we had a period of deprivation.
    Hamas caused the hunger problem. Hamas caused the shortage problem. And Israel is blamed, again falsely. We are now engaged in a humanitarian surge of offering safe, secure routes for distribution of food. We’re doubling and perhaps quadrupling the number of distribution points that will be safeguarded, and we’re doing airdrops and invite other countries to join us. That’s what Israel is doing. And as a result, now hundreds of trucks go in daily, and that hunger problem, that deprivation problem has basically been solved.
    What has not been solved, what has not stopped, is the campaign of lies. And especially those photographs of three children. One of them in the New York Times. The reputable New York Times. Nobody’s laughing… They put a photograph of an emaciated child, and they said, this is the cause of hunger. He’s embraced by his mother. Of course the mother is not emaciated, the brother is not emaciated. But this child was not emaciated from hunger. He was emaciated by a genetic disease, cerebral palsy. And two other children, same thing. Made great pictures and so on. Horrific, heart-wrenching pictures. Because it does tear your heart out when you see this. They were also suffering from genetic diseases. But two of the three were actually taken care of by Israel. We let out one of these children to go to an Italian hospital and thank God, he recovered there. The other is incurable. He was in our hospitals, but there’s nothing you can do about it.
    So, this is a complete reversal of lies, and I don’t take it lightly. I think this battle for truth has historical, tragic historical antecedents. My father was a great historian of the Jewish people, and a great historian of the Jews and the Middle Ages. In the Middle Ages, every single massacre that the Jews suffered was preceded by a campaign of vilification and lies. We were accused of spreading disease, vermin to the gentiles. We were accused of poisoning the wells. We were accused of killing Christian children for their blood, to bake matzos for Passover. These lies, horrific as they were, propelled antisemitism right into the 20th century, into the worst massacre of them all—the Holocaust. And the Nazis pretty much said the same thing about disease, about well poisoning, and so on. Well, that same phenomenon we see today. What the Jewish people were accused of in the Middle Ages and the subsequent centuries is what the Jewish state is now being accused of. There’s only one difference, then we had no defense. Now we have a country. Now we have an army. And now we fight back against our tormentors.
    And now we have a great ally in the form of President Trump and many of the American people. Yes, some have fallen, fallen victim to the these lies, and have followed them and swallow hook, line and sinker. And I’m talking about all these lies of Hamas, statistics of Hamas, false pictures of Hamas. But many Americans have not. Most Americans have not. They recognize that Israel stands for the same values as America. They recognize that we are fighting the barbarians at the gate. And when I say barbarians, this is not hyperbola. It’s not only the goal of destroying Israel. It’s even the method that they use to murder and mutilate the heathens, as they call them. And we saw that on October 7th, in the murder and rape and beheadings. The murder of women that you have just raped. The beheadings of men. And the mutilation of bodies. And the burning of babies. And the taking of over 250 hostages, grandmothers and their grandchildren, Holocaust survivors. That is the passion, and the fact that they went with GoPro cameras so people could… they could boast about it. There is something wicked and evil in this.
    And yet, you have on American campuses the people, even the schools that I went to in Boston. And Alan Dershowitz, you were in Harvard, I was at MIT. But can you say something in their defense right now? No. Yeah, I figured… Neither can I. Because I think it’s atrocious. Yet, you have people there siding with Hamas, citing ‘River to the Sea.’ Basically, the river to the sea, you’d think that this is a huge country. The river is the Jordan. It’s hardly a river. It’s a stream. I’m telling you that. And the sea is a few kilometers from here. In between sandwiched is the state of Israel, this tiny giant country. You know, it’s a giant country, but it’s tiny in dimension. And they basically say, wipe it off the map. And they don’t understand what they’re fighting for. Maybe some of them do, but there are people who join them who don’t even know what they’re talking about. And it’s not only the savagery of Hamas and the Iranian terror axis. In Syria just a few weeks ago, we stopped the savage massacre of Druze, a non-Islamic sect.
    And we saw, these people who hate them, hate us and hate America, and they chant the same thing: Death to America, death to Israel, death to the Jews, death to the heathen. And the Jews happen to be the heathen, the small minority. And they went into the town of Sweida, and they butchered the men, they raped the women, the nurses, and then shot them. They burnt babies. And they added a few things. They added, and you saw it live, and you have to see it to understand this. I mean, you see a Druze civilian wounded lying on the ground. And one of these fanatics, these unbelievable savages, they go in, knife the guy, tear out his heart and then eat it. And it takes a few seconds for death to come. So the victim has his heart eaten while he’s still alive.
    This is savagery. This is barbarism. This is what Israel is fighting on behalf of Western civilization. On behalf of civilization. And the propagation of these lies is exactly what we had in the Middle Ages. So, now we have the capacity to physically defend the Jewish state. But we now have to muster all the forces that seek to defend our common civilization against this mutilation of the truth that threatens our common future.
    That’s why I salute Newsmax and others who stand together, stand up for the truth, are not cowed, can speak their mind, can show the facts, could stand up for our common humanity and for our common future. And if you’re not ready in this day and age, especially in this day and age, to fight for freedom, you will lose it. If you do not fight for your civilization, you will lose it. We are prepared to fight. And I know America is prepared to stand with us, and I salute you for doing the same.
    Thank you, thank you all”.

    https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1ArgysQyLN/