Keith Siegel: ‘Worse than the abuse was not knowing if I would see my family again’

As they hid in their shelter, hearing rockets and gunfire and finding out on WhatsApp that their people in their neighbourhood had been killed, South African-born Aviva said: “It felt like the end of the world.”

Around 15 terrorists broke into their house and shot their way into the safe room. As footage of the abduction was shown, with the couple being forced at gunpoint into Keith’s car, neither looked at the screen, and Aviva covered her ears. “They pushed Keith onto the floor. Everything was done in a very brutal way,” she said.

The couple were blindfolded, taken into another car and forced into a tunnel, where they found themselves with Gali Berman and a female hostage with three children, who told them her husband and oldest daughter had been murdered by Hamas.

“I want everyone to imagine a very small place with terrorists with guns around us,” Aviva said to the audience. “Imagine a mother with her three kids. Gali had glass in his foot. Some people had bullets in their legs. It was terrible.”

Aviva, who described herself as someone who was “scared of everything”, said: “When I went downstairs [into the tunnel], I was shaking; it felt like there was a knife in my heart. I thought I was going to die.”

During captivity, until the first hostage deal, when Aviva was released, they were held with Liri Albag, Agam Berger and Amit Soussana.

Aviva said that every time a rocket was launched, the building would shake. “I would count the cracks in the wall. I was scared that something would happen to the others. Once, there was a huge, huge bomb. I was looking at the others and they were calm. I asked: ‘How?’ They said they had got used to it. Keith told me to say to myself when I heard a rocket or bomb: ‘It’s far. I’m not the target.’”

A kindergarten teacher on the kibbutz, Aviva said she also tried to calm herself by going through the names of the children she taught, counting slowly and repeatedly saying the nursery rhyme: “One, two, buckle my shoe.’”

“I didn’t sleep for 51 days. I held Agam’s hand at night to keep me calm and listened to Keith snoring, saying: ‘Thank God [for the snoring]. It was so quiet, apart from the bombs that at least I don’t feel so alone.”

At the end of November, Aviva was released in the first hostage deal. “We were told to wear clothes like Arabs, so I had to wear a hijab. A terrorist said to me: ‘I’m doing a prayer in Arabic. You do it with me.’ I’m thinking: ‘Which Allah is he praying to? I don’t think Allah would like what he is doing.’”

When the terrorists told her she was going to Israel without Keith, they wouldn’t let her say goodbye. ‘So, I pushed the terrorist out the way – it was the only time I misbehaved – and I hugged Keith. I said: ‘I’ll be strong for you. You be strong for me.’ I didn’t know at that point if they were going to kill me, rape me or kill him.’”

After the ceasefire ended, Keith, 66, said that the treatment towards him became even worse. “It was very cruel and violent. They kicked my ribs and legs, they spat at me, they cursed me and screamed at me. They made me lie down.”

Initially, he was taken to a school full of Palestinian civilians. “They sat me down in a courtyard, and a commander gave me Muslim prayer beads to hold and told me I had to tell them I was his grandfather and I was a mute. An elderly man sat down next to me and said: ‘Hello”, but I couldn’t say anything back.”

While some of his captivity was spent with hostages Matan Angrest and Omri Miran, six months was spent in isolation. “There was abuse, violence and threats. I was held in a small, dark room in unbelievable physical conditions, but the worst part was the uncertainty – not knowing I would ever be able to go home and be reunited with my family,” said Keith, who was born in the US and met his wife when he was on a programme in Israel in 1977. He only found out, when a terrorist put on the radio, that his son, Shai, had survived the October 7 attack.

During the interview with Rabbi Vadim Blumin, head of the UK and Western Europe delegation, Keith said that what gave him the mental strength to keep going was primarily his family and his faith. “It was very empowering for me to think about my family and talk to them. I knew they were distressed not knowing if I was alive, so I would close my eyes and send them messages, one by one, always starting with my mother. It offered me a connection to them, and I hoped it would somehow convey to them that I was okay.” Tragically, his mother passed away two months before Keith’s release in February.

He also began saying prayers he hadn’t said since he was a child, growing up in North Carolina. “I found the connection to the Jewish people and what we have endured and survived, very empowering.”

He also said that practising mindfulness and gratitude - “that my body was okay” – were also tools for survival.

Former hostages Keith Siegel (L) and his wife Aviva (R) campaigning for the release of remaining hostages in Gaza (Photo: Gaza)AFP via Getty Images

During their captivity, Aviva lost 10kg and suffered from a stomach infection after her release due to the water – the little they were given - in Gaza, and Keith lost 30kg.

“As a pretty shy person”, being in the public eye since coming home has been challenging, but Keith said he felt compelled do all he could to help ensure the release of the other hostages still held captive – and he called for the body of Rav Gvili, the last remaining captive to be able to come home to Israel. “There’s a real urgency to being able to talk about what it’s like being a hostage in Gaza and being able to give first-hand testimony,” he said.

Asked what they hoped would happen next, to applause from the audience, Aviva said: “I want to ask Bibi Netanyahu to say sorry; sorry to all the people in [Israel], to [my son] Shai for having to discover that his parents had been kidnapped, to me for a year and two months of not knowing if Keith was alive, and for what he went through. I want him to say sorry to you for praying for us, crying for us and worrying about us.

“There is nothing special about us. The only difference is that we were kidnapped.”