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    • Hamas’ action against elderly hostages ‘one of the most serious examples of elder abuse’
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    Hamas’ action against elderly hostages ‘one of the most serious examples of elder abuse’

    Harry Posted on

    With the large number of soldiers killed on October 7, 2023, young families living on the Gaza border, and the number of attendees of the Nova music festival, the impression is created that almost all of the victims of the Hamas massacre were young people.

    In fact, 13 percent of the 1,200 people killed (mostly civilians) were 65 or older, and a third of them were eighty years old. One was 91 years old Holocaust survivor – was shot in front of his house

    Two Israeli doctors who investigated the case histories of three kidnapped people aged 80 and over argue that the terrorists were responsible for “one of the most serious examples of elder abuse documented in the modern era.”

    A. Mark Clarfield, professor emeritus of geriatrics and director of the Center for Global Health in the College of Health Sciences Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Prof. D., a leading epidemiologist and public health physician in Beersheba and at the Braun School of Public Health and Community Medicine at Hadassah Medical Center and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Hagai Levine investigated the cases.

    They just published their findings. Rambam Maimonides Medical Journal Under the title “Kidnapped but not children: A case series of three octogenarian hostages held in captivity by Hamas.”

    Hamas released a video of three elderly male Israeli hostages begging for their release. December 18, 2023. (Source: Screenshot/Hamas Telegram)

    Levine has headed the medical team of the Forum for Hostages and Missing Families since its founding.

    In addition to those killed that day, 251 more people—Jewish and Arab Israelis, Americans, and other foreigners—were taken hostage (for a total of 255 hostages, in addition to two soldiers and two civilians kidnapped before October 7). Many have since died. Investigators presented case histories of three people over the age of 80 who were abducted; two of them have since been released and one remains in captivity.

    The researchers described the extreme “premorbid” vulnerability of these elderly hostages with additional data on their clinical condition and the extreme stress they were exposed to.

    Maimonides (Moses ben-Maimon, rabbi and physician, 1138-1204) wrote, “There is no mitzvah greater than paying the ransom of captives.”

    Less than half (117) of the 251 hostages on October 7 – 109 – were returned by exchange, and eight were rescued by the IDF.

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    To date, 37 bodies have been recovered, including six who were killed as Israeli soldiers approached to rescue them.

    Evidence suggests that intense sexual violence occurred at the time of the initial attack and may still be ongoing, as acknowledged by the UN and detailed in the press.

    Following the attack on October 7, a fierce war broke out that led to the displacement of hundreds of thousands of people and the deaths of hundreds of Israelis and dozens of others on both sides of the border, including in the south and north of Gaza. thousands of Gazans.

    THE WAR has spread beyond the Hamas attack on Israel to include attacks on Israeli civilians by Hezbollah terrorists from Lebanon in the north, Houthis from Yemen in the south, and Iran in the east.

    “The situation of some released child hostages has been recently documented; This shows how poor conditions all the hostages were probably being held in. However, to our knowledge, there is little in the medical literature discussing the health effects of long-term abduction on older people. We found only one article on the health of released captives that included the elderly, but that article did not specifically deal with health effects on people over 65, Clarfield and Levine noted.

    Human Rights Watch, for its part, produced a useful report on the vulnerability of older people caught up in armed conflict, but wrote that this report did not specifically concern the health status of hostages still in captivity or those who had been released.

    still exist 101 hostages in GazaMost of these are likely kept underground and include children, men and women of all ages, including the disabled and the elderly. “The uncertain loss, lack of certainty and proper burial causes great pain to their families and the public.”

    The eldest hostage is 86-year-old Shlomo Manzur.

    “His life story contains a terrible irony: Fluent in Arabic, he witnessed atrocities as a toddler in Baghdad, Iraq, and survived the 1941 Farhud Pogrom, in which 180 Jews were killed and more than 1,000 were injured ; This anger is part of the Holocaust in Arab countries. “He was kidnapped today in his old age, it is unknown whether he is dead or alive.”

    The fate of most of the elderly is unknown, and at least half have likely died due to a grim combination of lack of medication for chronic diseases, poor conditions (cleaning, ventilation), untreated trauma, and the elderly’s diet. The authors wrote that he would be kept underground as well as active torture, abuse and murder.

    “Understandably, much has been published surrounding this conflict about the horrific effects on the victims of above-ground warfare and their health. However, it is surprising that there are no reports in the medical literature describing the clinical condition of those held underground in Hamas’s tunnel prisons or the active demands for their release.

    “All 251 abducted persons are victims of war crimes as defined in international law and stated by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). But calls for their release appear to be informal, muted, or worse, non-existent.”

    For example, Levine and Clarfield continued: “A UN press release focusing solely on the situation of the people of Gaza is all too typical.”

    Families of elderly hostages provided the team with data on their loved ones’ mental health problems, as well as conditions common in older age, such as diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular, respiratory and kidney diseases.

    “Such people need regular provision of their medications and constant medical attention so that their condition can be properly controlled.”

    First case study

    THE FIRST case study involved Israeli-born Yocheved Lifshitz, who was 85 years old when she and her husband Oded were kidnapped from their home on Kibbutz Nir Oz. He worked as a photographer and taught both photography and physical education.

    About a quarter of the kibbutz’s 400 members were killed or kidnapped. The couple had lived there for many years and worked hard to develop good relations with their Gazan neighbors.

    He had long suffered from various chronic conditions, including diabetes, back pain due to a herniated disc, kidney failure, arrhythmia (requiring a pacemaker), valvular heart disease, and pulmonary hypertension.

    To control such illnesses, he had to take 17 different medications (including beta blockers, proton pump inhibitors, anticoagulants, empagliflozin, metformin, and levothyroxine). Although he received some medications from his captors, he was not offered all the necessary medications and it was doubtful that he was given the correct medications in the appropriate doses.

    The second case study is Yocheved’s 83-year-old husband, Oded, who was also born in Israel. He is a well-known journalist and one of the founders of his kibbutz; For years, he volunteered with the Road to Healing Foundation, taking Palestinians from the Gaza border to Israeli hospitals for medical care.

    His medical condition is much more complex than his wife’s and includes serious respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. He was taking Trelegy, an ACE inhibitor, acetylsalicylic acid, carbocysteine, a statin, iron, and vitamin D, among other medications.

    When he was last seen by his wife, he was lying unconscious outside their home, which had been looted during the violent kidnapping. Although he thought he was dead, it was only when another hostage, who was later released, reported seeing him alive but in very poor condition in the tunnels that he realized he had not been killed – at least not initially.

    But without a regular supply of most of his medications and proper medical monitoring, he is unlikely to survive for long.

    The third case study is Elma Avraham, who was approximately 85 years old when she was taken hostage and was among a handful of people who were later released. Before his abduction, he was living independently at his home on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, with a stable medical condition, despite various illnesses. His medical history includes hypothyroidism, cutaneous vasculitis, ischemic heart disease, and transcatheter aortic valve implantation five years before his diagnosis.

    Prescribed medications include levothyroxine, aspirin, ramipril, lercanidipine, rosuvastatin and amitriptyline. He couldn’t get the medicine he needed from his kidnappers, but he was able to get some of his pills when he was kidnapped. This resourcefulness probably saved his life.

    When he returned as part of a prisoner exchange, he was found to be in a myxedema coma; This is a terrifying clinical picture rarely seen in modern practice. After eight days in the intensive care unit, he was transferred to the hospital’s geriatric ward for rehabilitation. A few months later, he was discharged from the hospital and sent to a geriatric hospital.

    In recent interviews with the authors, both women declared that they would not fully recover until all remaining hostages returned home (the survivors for rehabilitation and the dead for burial).

    “These older people shed new light on the word ‘resilience.’ All three octogenarian hostages described here exhibit various manifestations of these more generalized phenomena. Each reached old age having lived on kibbutzim very close to the Gaza border for decades, and two had survived being smuggled into Gaza.”

    Clarfield noted that as a young doctor almost half a century ago, he treated World War I veterans. It was truly an honor to be able to pay his “last respects” to him.

    Levine was inspired by knowing that his great-grandfather was also a doctor during the same conflict. Recently, both had the privilege of caring for the last survivors of the Holocaust as they approached the end of their long and trauma-filled lives.

    “But these hostage cases in Gaza are different. Their captivity continues, and continues in real time, and these vulnerable people are all victims of severe elder abuse, the like of which, to our knowledge, has not been previously documented in the literature.

    “What has been done outside Israel to meet the medical needs of the remaining old and young hostages? Unfortunately, very few. For example, the International Committee of the Red Cross’s mandate to provide humanitarian protection and assistance to victims of armed conflict and to ensure compliance with international humanitarian law has not been very proactive.

    “In the view of many observers, the ICRC did not use all available means to gain access to the hostages and provide them with the necessary assistance. Although the ICRC requested information from Hamas about the remaining hostages, no information was received.

    “The World Health Organization, other UN bodies and many humanitarian non-governmental organizations, while quick to condemn Israel for the harm it inflicts on Gazans, appear to offer limited or only token support for the immediate release of those illegally abducted by Hamas.” the authors concluded.



    Harry
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