‘I did not break’: former hostage Arbel Yehud recounts 482 days of horror in Gaza

Former Israeli hostage Arbel Yehud describes her captivity to the Knesset’s Constitution Committee on May 19, 2025. Photo by Knesset Spokesperson/TPS-IL.

Arbel Yehud, who spent 482 days in captivity in Gaza, gave harrowing testimony Monday before the Knesset Constitution Committee, describing severe abuse, psychological torment, and isolation that she said echoed the horrors of the Holocaust.

“I was severely beaten, I was held in solitary confinement in conditions like in the concentration camps during the Holocaust,” she said, recounting her treatment by captors from the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group.

Yehud was abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz alongside her partner, Ariel Cunio, who remains in captivity. Standing before lawmakers, she described her survival as a personal miracle — and a call to action. “I am Arbel Yehud, a proud Jew who alone survived the terrible captivity… and I have come to cry out for the release of the rest of my brothers and sisters who are still there.”

Yehud expressed bitter disappointment in the Israeli leadership, accusing it of prioritising military strategy over the safety of hostages.

“Do you think it makes sense that I should cry out for the freedom of my beloved Ariel, his brother David, and the rest of the hostages? They are there as hostages for the lives of the terrorists and the survival of the Netanyahu government,” she told lawmakers.

“When I was there, I thought that my family and the Israeli government would work for my release as the one and only supreme goal. I was right about my family, but not about the government… 591 days after the outbreak of the war, [it continues] on the military path that endangers the lives of the hostages,” Arbel added.

She described enduring missile strikes and gunfire so close she could feel their force on her body. The night Israeli forces rescued two other hostages, Luis and Fernando, in Rafah, Yehud believed her end was near. “I chose to say goodbye to my family because I felt that this was my last day.”

During her captivity, she said she was repeatedly beaten whenever Israeli strikes harmed relatives of her captors. “I was thrown into isolation for long days without food fit for human consumption and with a level of hygiene like in the concentration camps.”

What sustained her, Yehud said, was a promise to return home. “I survived because I maintained the hope and commitment to return to my family… even in the moments of despair… I did not break.”

At least 1,180 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 58 remaining hostages, 36 are believed to be dead.