Israeli hostages were subjected to 'psychological terrorism' by Hamas, say doctors

A paediatrician in Israel's Schneider Children's Medical Center said that the reports of Israeli hostages being in stable condition after being released by Hamas were misleading. According to a report by The Times of Israel on Monday (Dec 4), Dr Yael Mozer-Glassberg, the director of the paediatric liver transplantation service at the medical centre, said, “From the medical point of view, this was a terrible event. Reports that everyone is giving that the returnees are in more or less stable condition are not true.”

Dr Mozer-Glassberg is part of a team of six female physicians, as well as nutritionists, psychologists, and social workers who have attended to 26 hostages - 19 children and seven women who were brought to the centre after they were released.

“The hostages shared with us stories about how limited the food they were given was. If they were given food at all, it was sometimes only a cup of tea and a biscuit or a single dried date in the morning and rice in the evening,” she said.

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The doctor said that Hamas militants inflicted psychological terrorism on the hostages "by forcing them to eat everything given to them after their stomachs had shrunk and hunger pains diminished after having eaten nearly nothing for days."

Another Israeli doctor treating freed hostages said that survivors were suffering from an unprecedented level of extremely severe psychological abuse endured during captivity.

"I can tell you that on behalf of all the medical and psychological teams treating those who return, the mental states we encountered have no precedent in medical literature. We feel that we have to rewrite the textbooks of post-trauma," Dr Renana Eitan told Sunday Night in America.

Dr Eitan said that the hostages were subject to starvation, beating, and sexual abuse. The hostages were also being held in inhumane sanitary conditions.

The hostages were held in solitary confinement and spent long days in total darkness until they developed severe hallucinations, she added.

(With inputs from agencies)

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