An Israeli couple’s harrowing ordeal

NICK EICHER, HOST: Coming up next on The World and Everything in It: trapped in Gaza.

Now, a word of warning: this is a tough story. Difficult subject matter and maybe too graphic for younger listeners. If you have children nearby, it might be well to scroll forward about 7 minutes and come back later. But do come back later! This is a powerful story.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: It’s a story that stems from the October 7th attacks over a year ago, when Hamas tore through Israeli settlements and killed roughly 1,200 people. They also took more than 240 hostages back to Gaza. Among them Aviva Siegel … and she’s speaking out about the horrors she witnessed.

WORLD Reporter Travis Kircher brings you her story in the first of a two-part series.

AVIVA SIEGEL: I was born in South Africa, and I was brought to Israel with my mom when I was nine years old. We lived in a little town…

TRAVIS KIRCHER: Aviva Siegel has spent most of her life living on what’s called a kibbutz. It’s a sort of close-knit farming community unique to Israel.

SIEGEL: People just live together in a very quiet place that all you can hear and see is green and trees and flowers and birds and lots of dogs and cats and lots of just lovely people that want to be together.

She met her future husband Keith on a kibbutz. She was doing the mandatory year of community service required of all Israeli citizens before serving in the military. Keith was a volunteer from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, visiting his brother. They hit it off.

SIEGEL: Keith is a lovely, lovely, lovely, sweet, gentle person. I fell in love with him in two seconds…He was supposed to study in university, and he decided to stay and to get married to me.

That wedding took place when she was 20 and he was 22. They eventually moved to the Kfar Aza kibbutz. It had a lot of young people. It was also a mere four miles from the Gaza border. There was the occasional rocket attack from the other side, but no one worried about a large-scale massacre.

SIEGEL: I don't know—understand—how so many people, I mean, thousands of people living so close to Gaza, and we knew how dangerous it was, but nobody really thought that something like that can happen.

But on October 7th, 2023, after they’d lived there for more than four decades it did.

SIEGEL: I knew that something really, really bad is happening. It felt like it was the end of the world. And my house, because it's so close, shaked.

Siegel says it started in the early morning hours with rocket attacks. She and Keith got out of bed and ran to their bomb shelter in their pajamas. That’s when they encountered Hamas terrorists.

SIEGEL: I was shaking. Keith was trying to calm me down, and then we heard them shooting the house, walking inside, and 15 terrorists just opening the door of the shelter. I stood up and screamed, and I know today that that's what saved our lives. They took us in such a brutal way. They tore Keith’s shirt and they pushed us, and Keith fell, and they broke his ribs, and they were shooting us. One of the bullets hit Keith's hand.

Then they forced them into a vehicle and drove them the short distance to Gaza.

SIEGEL: They took us in Keith’s car with a terrorist with a knife in front of my face and a gun in front of Keith and I.

Aviva says one moment sticks out in her mind: seeing the reactions of the people on the streets of Gaza when they arrived.

SIEGEL: All Gaza was standing outside, clapping their hands shooting in the air, shouting in Arabic, welcoming us while we were shaking and didn't understand what's happening to us. And they received us, knowing that we're coming.

The terrorists took them into underground tunnels. Siegel says that was especially hard for her because she’s always been afraid of the dark.

SIEGEL: I'll never forget the terrorists looking at me from underneath the ground and calling me and saying, “Come!” while I'm shaking, while the ladder shaking with me. And I went before Keith to look after Keith, and he looked after me when he was walking behind me

Aviva and Keith were now two of more than 240 Israeli hostages trapped in Gaza. And as the drama would play out on television screens across the world the horror for them was just beginning.

SIEGEL: The worst thing for me is when they tortured Keith they tortured Keith all the time, I don't know, because he's a man, maybe, and it was so hard for me to see that and try not to be too emotional, because I wasn't allowed to cry. Keith, with his ribs broken, begged them during the day just to lie down to relax his pain, and they laughed.

While in captivity they would hear heartbreaking stories of the massacre from their fellow hostages. Like the mother who said Hamas militants shot both her husband and daughter in front of her children.

SIEGEL: The kids were—one was nine, one was 11, and one was 17. They just had seen their father dead in front of their eyes, and their sister was shot in her face just because she fainted.

She says she personally witnessed sexual abuse.

SIEGEL: That was a terrible, terrible moment, because I've got the feeling that it could happen to me and it could happen to Keith, and it could happen all the time, because they just did whatever they want to, whenever they want to.

But there’s one memory that haunts her to this day: that of a young woman—a fellow hostage. The terrorists accused her of lying then in Aviva’s words beat her to pieces.

SIEGEL: And when she came back…she sat like a little child, crying and shaking, and I couldn't get up to help her, because I wasn't allowed to hug. And that was a very difficult moment for me, because I'm a mother. I felt like their mothers, and I wanted to protect them, and I could not.

Aviva learned later that Kfar Aza—the kibbutz that was her home—lost 64 people on October 7^th many of whom were burnt alive, raped, or shot. And of those 64 people, she knew nearly all of them personally.

But she didn’t know any of this yet. For now, she and her husband Keith were imprisoned underground. Trapped in Gaza. Hearing the lies Hamas was telling them over and over and over again.

SIEGEL: They're going to kill us, and that we'll never, ever go back because there's no Israel anymore, and we're just going to stay there, and we've been forgotten, and the whole world is just bombing Israel. There's no Israel left.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Travis Kircher.

REICHARD: Tomorrow, the rest of Aviva Seigel’s story, including how she got out, what she’s saying to U.S. leaders, and her response to criticism of Israel.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.