Israeli couple kidnapped on October 7 tell of horror abuse and sex attacks
An Israeli couple who were kidnapped in the October 7 massacre have revealed the horrifying ordeal the hostages endured in captivity in Gaza. Aviva Siegel, a former kindergarten teacher, said women as young as 16 returned from harrowing sex abuse and one came back "purple" after such a barbaric assault.
The 65-year-old said the hardest thing was knowing what was happening to the young girls during her 51 days as a hostage in Gaza. "I'm a witness of all of the girls who were beaten up into pieces," she told the Daily Mail. She said the Hamas captors forced women into wearing tight clothing and showering naked in front of them, and one guard entered the bathroom and forced a girl into performing oral sex.
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Aviva recounted how a 16-year-old female hostage who had "never ever [shown] anybody her body" was sexually assaulted, while giving testimony to the United Nations Committee against Torture in November last year.
"The Hamas terrorist just stood there and stared at her, and smiled. I remember looking at her while she came out of there. She was shocked, I was shocked," she told the committee.
Aviva said she had to dissociate because the reality of what she was witnessing and enduring was too much for her to fight off suicidal thoughts.
"Because to see the girls being beaten, or Keith being threatened, or Keith being starved – and falling when he wanted to get up to the bathroom, because he was so weak – and all those things... I wanted to die. I just wanted to die."
Her husband Keith was also kidnapped from their former home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023, but he wasn't freed until after 484 days.
The 67-year-old lost about 35kg from being starved, while Aviva lost 10kg. The guards were putting on weight as they ate in front of the captives.
Keith told the panel that the captors denied him water, forced him to strip, shaved his entire body, compared his intimate parts with another hostage, threatened them with knives, and made them beg for the bathroom.
During the entire time he was in captivity, he said he was allowed to use a bucket of water and a cup to wash himself 25 times.
On the day the married couple were kidnapped, when 1,200 others were killed, and 250 were taken captive by Hamas, gunmen stormed their safe room where they had been hiding for about four hours since 6.30am.
Keith's ribs were broken and Aviva tore the meniscus in her knee due to the force used by the terrorists. He said they pulled them "violently, brutally" out of the safe room and into the living room, where between 10 and 15 screaming terrorists surrounded them.
Hamas released Aviva as part of a temporary ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and the US in November 2023. Then on February 1, 2025, Keith was handed over to the Red Cross before being taken to Israel by IDF soldiers, in phase one of a mediated ceasefire-hostage release deal.
He was reunited with Aviva and their four children, but the family have never returned to Kibbutz Kfar Aza, where 64 of their 950 residents were killed, and 19 were taken hostage that day.
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