For the first time, Ori Megidish, a survivor of Hamas captivity in Gaza, spoke with the Uvda Program about her experiences.
By Rachel Avraham
For the first time, Ori Megidish, a survivor of Hamas captivity in Gaza, spoke with the Uvda Program about her experiences, including the sexual harassment that she endured by a Hamas guard, being nearly killed in an airstrike and spending time in a Gazan hospital, the Times of Israel reported. According to the report, Megidish spoke to Channel 12’s Uvda program in a pre-recorded interview that was broadcast on last Wednesday night, as the families of hostages remaining in Gaza marked 600 days since the devastating Hamas massacre in which they were abducted.
“We see over 30-40 terrorists entire the mobile shelter in euphoria,” she recounted. “They are so lively. They come in, looking at us wearing a smile, I will never forget their smiles. I don’t even remember what they look like, but I remember that they smiled. And they look at us to see who is alive and who isn’t. I had the phone in my hand. I was afraid that they would shoot me because of the telephone in my hand. And so I tossed it away, praying that the text I sent would be sent as some sort of memory of me because I don’t know what will happen to me.”
Megidish noted that the message was not sent in the end: “I checked with my brother. It wasn’t sent. They’re standing there starting to pick up those who are alive. They pick up me, Noa and all the girls who were kidnapped with us. We’re standing on the other side of the room. I look at the girls in front of me, the girls who are no longer alive, I look at them and I say, why I am on this side and they are on the other side? And it’s hard, I mean, the images of those girls are still in my head.”
According to her, “18 months later, I can’t. It does not make sense. We were sitting together and a bullet hits her and misses me? You can’t explain it. It’s something that is. It’s not real. I cannot contain such a thing that they didn’t hurt me.”
In the continuation of the interview, she recounted her experience with sexual harassment: “I was sitting on the mattress next to him and it just feels so uncomfortable. When I saw him trying to get closer, I told him that I have a partner and that might get him off me. So I tell him that I lied to him and that I have a partner at home. But it did the exact opposite and gave him legitimacy to ask sexual questions. And he starts to get closer and touches me when I don’t want to. I say to him, “I don’t want to; stay away from me.” He didn’t reach under my clothes but it was like I would sit on the couch and he would pass by and tap me on my bum or in places he shouldn’t. I was also wounded in the chest, so he would ask, “how is the injury,’ trying to take advantage of the injury to peek. He’s the one who supposedly protects me and is my guard. I can’t resist him as much as I should.”
Megidish stressed, “I mean it disgusts me how I got to this situation. He just disgusted me. Every time I think about it just disgusts me.” She noted that when she returned to Israel, she tried not to think about it, and only after a couple of months I came to the terms with the fact that it is sexual harassment and it’s not a shame that I went through that. And I remember talking to my psychologist and I could not stop crying. It took time until I told my partner and my mother, who only knows half of the things, and my father, whom I told just a couple of days ago. I know that I am not to blame for that. I know that I could not have prevented that. At the end of the day, there’s always what if I did this and what if I did that? G-d knows what would have happened if we stayed in their apartment a little while longer.”
“The whole 23 days I feared I would die,” Megidish said of the period until she was rescued, the Times of Israel reported. “It never left me for a moment. It is a fear you can’t describe.” Like other hostages who have returned, Megidish spoke of her fear in captivity that she would be killed in an Israeli airstrike, the Times of Israel noted. On her third Saturday in Gaza, a bombing caved in the roof of the apartment where she was imprisoned, setting the house on fire and killing one of the guards, the Times of Israel noted.
According to the report, Megidish suffered a fractured skull. A doctor, speaking to her in English, explained he would sew up her head and face, and then proceeded to do so without giving her any anesthetic. “It was indescribable pain,” she said, and recalled that the hospital staff told her to keep quiet and not scream, the Times of Israel stressed. After a night at the hospital, she was taken to another apartment, where the guards threatened to murder her if Israel attempted to rescue her again. However, in the end, Israel did manage to rescue her.
Since her return on October 20th, Megidish spends a lot of time at home, building Lego projects, the Times of Israel noted. According to the report, she explained that as a naturally shy person, she was uncomfortable with all the attention she would get outside, well-meaning though it would be.
Photo from StandWithUs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VLdjj0zrpfs&t=12s
