Former Gaza hostage Ilana Gritzewsky recalled in a Wednesday UN Security Council meeting that during her captivity, when she was moved locations, she was forced to walk hand in hand with a terrorist as if she were his wife, so nobody would notice she was a hostage.
Gritzewsky described her abduction from Kibbutz Nir Oz in detail.
“They grabbed me by the hair, hit me in the stomach, causing me to lose my breath. They dragged me across the floor, lifted me, and threw me against the wall. They pointed guns at me, hit me, and tried to film me with my phone.
"I raised my hands, told them I was Mexican, begged them not to hurt me, not to rape me, not to shoot me, just to let me go. The only thing I could think of was having my family see me end my life like this. The terrorists beat me, humiliated me, touched me all over, threw me on a motorcycle, and took me into Gaza.”
While she was on the way to Gaza, she lost consciousness when the captors began to touch her and sexually abuse her. She woke up lying naked on rocks surrounded by the Hamas terrorists. To prevent them from assaulting her, she told them she was on her period. They then threw a hijab at her.
While in captivity, she lost 12 kg (24 lbs) in 55 days. While the hostages were fed 10 chickpeas or a piece of dry flat bread a day, the terrorists had meat, rice, and vegetables, which they ate in front of the captives.
She recalled that the captors would wake up the hostages in the middle of the night for cruel interrogations.
The terrorists who held her did not wear Hamas uniforms. One of them said he was a math teacher, and the other was a lawyer.
At one point in her captivity, she was held in Nasser Hospital with other hostages, in an area of the hospital that only Hamas terrorists could enter.
While in captivity, she learned her boyfriend, Matan Zangauker, who Hamas is still holding, was also a captive. She begged her captors to see him. The terrorists kept giving her tasks to do, saying that if she did them, she would be able to see him later. “Later never came. I did not get to see Matan,” Gritzewsky said.
Her captors cruelly played with her emotions. At one point, she was told she was being taken home, but instead, she was brought to a tunnel where several other hostages were held, including David Cunio, who is still a hostage.
Gritzewsky's aliyah to Israel
Gritzewsky told the council that she made aliyah by herself, to be in a safe country, “free of delinquents and cartels.”
“Leaving everything wasn’t easy, but I knew I was on the right path,” she said.
She called on human rights groups and “everyone who claims to care” to raise their voices and stand up for those still held in captivity.
“Why is our pain treated as less? Why are our histories questioned, erased? I am here not for myself, but for every woman and man who did not make it home. For every voice that was ignored. For the 50 hostages still in Gaza.”
In Spanish, she said, “I am also here today as a Mexican woman, because that is where I was born, where the cartels kill and torture people.
“They call them as they are - terrorists, criminals, delinquents. The world doesn’t hesitate to condemn them, so that's why I wonder why Hamas, which burns children alive, rapes women, mutilates bodies, kidnaps children and adults, why are they not condemned in the same way? Why is Hamas considered differently? Why is it not considered the terrorist group that it is? Why are Jewish groups questioned when others are immediately believed? It's not just hypocrisy, it is betrayal.”
“I was released after 55 days, but my soul remains with the 50 hostages still in Gaza.”