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Former hostages Aviva and Keith Siegel have described sexual abuse against young female captives, severe beatings, starvation, forced nudity and psychological torture during the 51 and 484 days they spent in Gaza after Hamas-led terrorists abducted them from Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7, 2023.
Their new joint account, published by the Daily Mail and reported by Israel Hayom on Aug. 24, expands upon testimony the couple previously delivered to the United Nations Committee Against Torture.
Aviva said young female hostages repeatedly returned visibly injured or shaken after being taken away by their captors. One came back so badly bruised that her skin appeared purple. Another disclosed that a captor had touched her body and threatened to kill her if she spoke about it.
Aviva also described a hostage being taken into a bathroom, ordered to undress and forced to perform oral sex on a captor. A 16-year-old girl was forced to shower while a guard watched and smiled.
“I wanted to die. I just wanted to die,” Aviva said of witnessing the abuse.
Young Hostages Returned Bruised and Shaking
The latest interview provides a fuller account of incidents Aviva previously described before the UN committee in Geneva in November 2025.
Aviva testified that captors repeatedly took young women into bathrooms, where there were fewer witnesses. One hostage returned trembling and later disclosed that a captor had sexually assaulted her. Another was forced to perform a sexual act and smile afterward.
The captors also forced female hostages to shower naked in their presence and wear clothing that did not fit properly, according to the Siegels’ account.
Keith separately described being brought into a room where a female hostage was tied, gagged and beaten with rods. Her captors reportedly pressed a sharp object against her forehead and held a gun to her head while demanding that she confess to being an Israeli military officer. Keith was ordered to help pressure her despite knowing she had nothing to confess.
The episode continues to haunt him, he told the UN.
Starvation and Total Physical Control
The couple described a system in which captors controlled food, water, movement, hygiene and access to toilets.
Aviva lost approximately 10 kilograms, or 22 pounds, during her 51 days in captivity. Keith lost roughly 35 kilograms, or 77 pounds, over 484 days. Aviva said their captors ate in front of the hostages and gained weight while the captives became increasingly malnourished.
At some locations, the hostages were ordered to remain lying down from 5 p.m. until 9 a.m. and were threatened if they moved. Aviva recalled being screamed at for allowing one foot to extend from beneath a blanket.
Keith said guards forced him to undress, shaved his body and compared his genitals with those of another hostage. Captors also threatened the hostages with knives and restricted their access to toilets, causing them to wait until they could no longer control their bodily functions.
During his entire captivity, Keith estimated that he was permitted to rinse himself only about 25 times using a bucket and cup. At one tunnel location, two hostages and three captors shared a toilet that could be flushed only once a day.
Dozens of Locations and Captors
Keith was repeatedly transferred among tunnels, schools and residential buildings. He said he encountered approximately 60 captors and spent about six months in complete isolation.
His account describes an extended detention system involving rotating personnel, controlled food distribution and repeated transfers between military tunnels and civilian locations.
Conditions reportedly worsened after the November 2023 ceasefire collapsed. Keith described being kicked and spat upon while lying on the ground. By the final stage of his captivity, he feared he had become too weak to crawl out of the tunnels.
He was released on Feb. 1, 2025, after 484 days. Aviva had been released in November 2023 after 51 days.
Accounts Match a Wider Evidentiary Record
The Siegels’ testimony adds to multiple investigations documenting sexual and gender-based violence during the Oct. 7 attack, the abduction of hostages and their subsequent captivity.
A March 2024 UN mission found reasonable grounds to believe that sexual violence, including rape and sexualized torture, was committed against hostages taken to Gaza. The mission also found reasonable grounds to believe that such abuse may have been continuing at the time.
In May 2026, the Israeli nonprofit Civil Commission published a two-year investigation drawing on more than 430 interviews, testimonies and meetings, alongside more than 10,000 photographs and video segments representing over 1,800 hours of visual analysis.
The commission identified 13 recurring patterns, including rape, sexual torture, forced nudity, threats of forced marriage, abuse of male hostages and the filming or distribution of sexualized humiliation. It concluded that sexual and gender-based violence was widespread, systematic and integral to the Oct. 7 assault and the subsequent treatment of hostages. Those findings represent the commission’s legal analysis and have not been adjudicated by a court.
The Siegels’ latest interview does not present an isolated allegation. It adds specific firsthand testimony concerning multiple captors, victims and detention locations to an expanding record of sexual abuse, torture and deliberate deprivation inside Gaza.