JERUSALEM (VINnews) — Arbel Yehoud, an Israeli woman who was held hostage in Gaza for 482 days after being abducted on October 7, revealed that she was sexually abused “almost every day” in captivity” and attempted to take her own life three times during her ordeal.
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Speaking in an interview with Israeli Channel 12’s Ulpan Shishi news program, Yehoud, 30, described prolonged physical, psychological and sexual abuse at the hands of her captors in Gaza. She said she was held alone in extended isolation, starved and subjected to repeated mistreatment. During her captivity, she added, two of her ribs were broken.
“I tried to take my life several times. I felt that I couldn’t go on,” Yehoud said. The abuse, she stressed, was not a one-time incident but an almost daily reality throughout her 482 days in captivity.
Yehoud said she attempted suicide on three separate occasions. “There were moments when I thought that was the only way out,” she said. Yehoud said that on one occasion she saw clips from a demonstration in Israel to free captives, and seeing herself and her boyfriend Ariel Cunio in the placards gave her renewed will to live to see her freedom.
She credited Ariel, who was abducted alongside her on October 7 but later separated from her, with giving her the strength to survive. “Every time I remembered Ariel, it gave me the strength to keep breathing,” she said.
In the first months of their captivity, the couple managed to smuggle short love notes to each other through intermediaries, she recounted. That communication was eventually stopped when their captors threatened that if Cunio mentioned her name again, she would be harmed. For more than a year, the two lived in complete uncertainty about each other’s fate.
Yehoud was released on January 30 2025, walking alone through a crowd surrounded by armed terrorists. “My mind was trying to understand — am I free? But still surrounded by them?” she recalled. Even at the moment of her release, she said, she feared being abducted again.
After 738 days in captivity, Cunio was also freed. The couple are now trying to rebuild their lives. Yehoud said they are coping with sleepless nights, flashbacks and trauma, but emphasized that their belief they would see each other again is what kept them alive throughout the long months of captivity.
Not that suicide is ever acceptable, but if someone is going to do it, he or she should always take some enemies with him or her… preferably in the most gruesome way possible.
I don’t know if this historical anecdote is true or not, but I heard that as the 16th-17th century Turks used to run enslavement raids against various European xchian peoples, they didn’t bother with enslaving the Hungarians. Because the ferocious Hungarian slaves would always try to murder their masters at the first opportunity, such as slitting their nasters’ throats in their sleep, killing the masters’ children, or burning down their galley ships even with themselves inside. Yes, the individual murderous slaves would probably be tortured and killed in the most horrible manner when caught, but the Turks quickly learned to leave the rest of Hungarians alone.
Wonderful “journalism.” Burying this story after a day because it involves the abuse of a Jewish woman. Cowards.
Way too much detail for a Jewish website where impressionable young people may come and reas things