An Israeli teenager has described her kidnap horror in the tunnels of Gaza where the terrorists who killed her father and sister allegedly molested female hostages in the showers’.
Agam Goldstein-Almog was kidnapped alongside her mother Chen and her brothers Gal, 11, and Tal, 9, on October 7, while her father Nadav and older sister Yam, 20, were killed when the terrorists stormed their home in the Kibbutz Kfar Aza.
The 17-year-old was dragged out of her house and taken to Gaza, where she was forced to wear a hijab and recite Islamic prayers.
At one point during her 51-day-long ordeal before she was freed in a prisoner swap in late November, one of the guards vowed that he would find her a husband in Gaza, where she would spend the rest of her life as a ‘chained slave-wife’.
‘When one of my guards told me that he would find me a “husband” in Gaza, and that I would live the rest of my life as a chained slave-wife, my mother interrupted, deflecting his advances,’ Agam wrote in a haunting report about her experience in the Washington Post.
Agam Goldstein-Almog, 17, who was released from the Gaza Strip on November 26, 2023, after being taken hostage by Hamas during the October 7 attack on Israel, cries as she is embraced by a loved one shortly after being reunited with her family
Agam Goldstein-Almog was kidnapped alongside her mother Chen and her brothers Gal, 11, and Tal, 9, on October 7, while her father Nadav and older sister Yam, 20, were killed when the terrorists stormed their home in the Kibbutz Kfar Aza (pictured above in January)
Agam Goldstein-Almog, flanked by her mother Chen, both hostages released as part of a temporary ceasefire, speaks as displaced community members from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, on December 10, 2023
Inbar Goldstein reacts as she visits her parents’ house for the first time in November 2023 after it was burnt in the October 7 attack on Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Inbar lost her brother Nadav, her niece, Yam, while her sister-in-law Chen, her niece Agam and her nephews Gal and Talher were taken to Gaza for 51 days
The Israeli teenager said she met six other female hostages in the tunnels underneath Gaza.
‘[They] told me about men with guns who came into their shower rooms and touched their bodies. Hearing about these young women’s fear of sexual abuse was agonizing.’
Agam said that during her captivity in Gaza, Hamas moved her to a school hall filled with Gazan women and children to ‘serve as human shields’ as the terrorists launched rockets just a few feet away from her.
She said she was often told to look down on the ground and was ‘forbidden from mourning’ her dead father and sister, as the scenes of their death still haunt her
‘I see my father’s fading eyes when I close mine at night,’ Agam wrote in the Washington Post.
When Agam and her family were finally released as part of a hostage swap last year, a Hamas guard told them that in the ‘next war’, there would be no hostages and the terror group would instead ‘return to kill [them]’.
She said that when she arrived in Gaza, young civilians surrounded the car she was transported in and smiled and laughed at her.
But when a Red Cross vehicle took her family out of Gaza, yet another mob formed around the car – but this time, instead of laughing, the Gazans ‘banged on the windows and screamed at us: Die, die, die’.
Agam is now urging to free the six hostages she encountered in the tunnels, who are still being held in Gaza, saying they ‘should have come home a long time ago’.
Her mother Chen also spoke about their horrifying experiences in Gaza back in December, detailing what happened to them on October 7 and during their time in captivity.
Agam and Chen Goldstein-Almog have told of the horrors they experienced in Gaza
Mourners gather around the graves of Sgt. Yam Goldstein and her father, Nadav, during their funeral in Kibbutz Shefayim, Israel, Monday, October 23, 2023. Agam, her mother Chen and her brothers could not be at the funeral as they were held hostage in Gaza at the time
Gal, 11, and Tal, 9, were kidnapped by Hamas and taken to Gaza on October 7 alongside their mother and sister
Varda Goldstein and her daughter Inbar dig through the rubble as they visit the Kibbutz Kfar Aza for the first time after they lost Nadav and Yam, on November 10, 2023
‘Within seven minutes we were in Gaza,’ said Chen. ‘I remember the looks on my children’s faces. There was shock and a great sadness that I couldn’t express because I was now in survival mode.’
Chen, 49, a social worker, had to restrain her grieving for husband Nadav, shot point-blank in the chest by the gunmen when they broke into the family safe room, and their eldest daughter Yam, 20, killed minutes later.
‘Everything would remind us of them,’ she said. ‘I cried sometimes, the children saw that too, but straight away I had to wipe away the tears and snap out of it. They (the militants) didn’t like it when we cried.’
She said the family spent their first and last nights in an underground tunnel before they were released in a late November prisoner swap, seven weeks into the Israel-Hamas war. In between, they were moved several times from house to house.
Food and water were sometimes restricted, she said, while sanitary conditions were tough with no running water in the toilets and just one change of clothes.
The windows were always heavily draped, said Chen. When darkness fell, houses where they were held were either lit with candles or kept pitch black. ‘The nights were very long, never-ending nights, and so were the days.’
‘Control of your life is taken in one moment and is in someone else’s hands. We had no influence over our lives except for trying to survive and keep ourselves sane and balanced and functioning,’ she said.
Agam is now urging to free the six hostages she encountered in the tunnels, who are still being held in Gaza, saying they ‘should have come home a long time ago’
Mourners gather around the graves of Sgt. Yam Goldstein and her father, Nadav, during their funeral in Kibbutz Shefayim, Israel, Monday, October 23, 2023
