Child Hostages: Return, Trauma, Healing

Healing. Courtesy of Schneider Children’s Medical Center.

"This was not something you could prepare for by reading a medical textbook. It was a case-by-case basis. There was no good way to prepare for this."

"It was amazing to see how much better those children who had their mothers with them fared both physically and mentally compared to those who were alone."

"The mental rehabilitation will take time."

Dr. Dana Singer-Harel, Pediatrician, Schneider Children's Hospital, Petach Tikvah, Israel

"In my wildest dreams these were stories that I never thought I would hear."

"The mother' main motivation was to protect their children. Every choice they made -- whether it [was] what they said or how much they ate -- was related to how to save their children."

"It is hard to say how long it will be [rehabilitation]. This is a journey that they need to recover from."

Ifat Ezer-Cohen, hospital social worker, Schneider Children's Hospital

Still from video --Israeli hostages reunite with family members after Hamas release – video

Scores of traumatized Israeli children who had been  held for over 50 days after being abducted by Hamas and brought to Gaza, were slowly being acclimatized to normalcy and the security of being back at home in Israel. The questions they have been timidly asking doctors and social workers throughout their initial days of freedom and recuperation stunned the medical staff: "Is it all right to eat? Can we look out the window? Is it all right to leave the room?"

 

Some of the children, after being held hostage for close to two months in Gaza, are slow to relax the stress of their inner tensions and confusion, while others have proven to be more immediately resilient and were able to be released from hospital after a few days' evaluation of their physical and mental health conditions since their release. Their condition on release led to their being referred to as "shadows of children".

 

Return. Courtesy of Schneider Children’s Medical Center.

The children, after having undergone months of deprivation, trauma, confusion and misery were thin and emaciated, pallid and fearful, in one fell swoop forced to leave their idyllic childhoods behind to tentatively enter a hitherto-unsuspected world that completely unravelled the normalcy they were accustomed to. Some of the children were orphaned on that fateful day of October 7. While other children  released from captivity have a future without a parent left behind in Gaza.

Many of these children we maintained in tiny underground chambers located within tunnels, no windows, no daylight, just a dank, dark environment unconducive to either mental or physical health. The meagre food they were given, along with the unsanitary conditions and the fear of the unknown weighed heavily on their sense of being. Some of the children had no idea how much time had passed since their abduction, nor where they had been taken to.

 

Jewish Chronicle

 

The fortunate among them had the reassuring proximity of their mothers, or siblings, abducted along with them. While in captivity, some of the children became aware of family members killed, conveyed to them through the Hebrew news radio their captors listened in on. Most of the children has lost ten to 15 percent of their normal body weight. While in captivity children were not permitted to wash, while others were once accommodated with a bucket of water.

Altogether, 30 some-odd children were ultimately freed through periodic releases in November.  Two children, including a ten-month-old and his four-year-old brother are unaccounted for. Their families still hope they are alive, although Hamas has stated that they had died in an air raid, which remains unverified. Aside from being in an emaciated condition and consumed with doubts and fears, many of the children were ill with stomach flu, diarrhea and lice. Their overall physical condition was found to be stable.

Many of the children suffered social regression, reflecting the emotional trauma forced upon them, leaving their previous toilet training unlearned, their bladders emptying while being fully clothed. Unsurprisingly the medical team looking after the children at the Schneider Children's Hospital where their conditions were assessed and initial efforts made to restore the children to normalcy were made, found that the children whose mothers were with them throughout their ordeal fared best.

Ifat Ezer-Cohen, the hospital social worker who tended to the children, recounted that some of the mothers had concocted stories for their children to allay their fearfulness, telling them they were in a safe place sheltering them while a war was happening at home. Released now from the hospital, returned to their friends and relatives, it is unknown how long it will take for the children to recover from the ordeal of the trauma forced on them; whether months or years.

Trauma. Courtesy of Schneider Children's Medical Center.