Released hostage Amit Soussana says Trump’s words offer ‘hope’

President-elect Donald Trump’s warning that there would be “all hell to pay in the Middle East” if the hostages in Gaza are not released before he assumes office has encouraged one former captive.

Amit Soussana, 41, who spent 55 harrowing days in Gaza, said Trump’s words offered a glimmer of hope for others still trapped when she spoke on Monday at Mill Hill Synagogue just moments after Trump posted his statement to Truth Social.

Trump declared that while everyone was talking about the hostages, it was “all talk and no action!”

He pledged, “Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!”

Soussana said the post made her feel that “something is changing,” adding: “I really hope something will change because we cannot live like this anymore... The world needs to wake up.”

Earlier that day, Mandy Damari made an appeal for the return of her British- Israeli daughter, Emily, one of 100 hostages still held in Gaza, imploring Foreign Secretary David Lammy to prioritise their welfare in aid negotiations.

But Lammy, posting on X hours later, instead urged Israel to address what he called the “unacceptable humanitarian situation in Gaza,” without mentioning the hostages.

In response, Soussana said: “I was in Gaza for 55 days. After four weeks, there was very little food, and we were happy because Israel was taking a stand… We suffered from it because we didn’t have food, but we were happy [about the blockade]”.

Soussana said that Hamas was “stealing” supplies going into Gaza and and called for aid to be sent to hostages as a matter of priority,

While she has told her story at the United Nations and to journalists, this was her first address to a synagogue, organised by the Israel Engagement Hub in partnership with the United Synagogue and Stand With Us.

When she was taken hostage in her home in Kfar Aza, she refused to show the terrorists where her car was, thinking that it would take Hamas longer to walk her to Gaza and give the Israel Defence Force more time to find her: “I wanted to stall them, I was sure the army would come,” she recalled.

During the walk, flanked by Hamas fighters, through the fields surrounding the kibbutz, she kept falling, pretending to lose her footing on the freshly ploughed soil. Her resistance enraged her captors, who beat her, punched her in face and choked her.

Despite the abuse, she fought back. “I resisted and went crazy. Four men tried to hold me down, but I was able to get up. They were amazed - and so was I - by the power I had.” Drone footage of Soussana’s fight went viral shortly after October 7.

At one point, the terrorists placed her on the back of a stolen bicycle, but Soussana put her hand on the wheel, causing the bike to topple and sending everyone tumbling. After about hour, bloodied and battered, she was thrown into a car and driven into Gaza.

The first house where she was held captive, just minutes from the border with Israel, was the opulent home of a senior Hamas leader. Initially, Soussana was confined to the roof, listening to the commander’s children playing in the street below.

At one stage, an Arab woman approached her, “She looked at me and smiled, and I remember trying to get her sympathy, thinking she was coming to take care of me.” But when the woman asked where Soussana was from and she said Israel, her face contorted and she shouted, “That is our land, you took our land.”

She recalled looking in a mirror for the first time since she was kidnapped and seeing her bruised and bloodied face – she was unable to open one of her eyes – and she wept. “I thought it was the lowest point in my life.” Little did she know that it was about to get even worse.

The Hamas commander and his family disappeared into the tunnel network when the rockets from Israel increased, leaving Soussana with Mohammad, the Hamas guard who sexually assaulted her.

In the lead-up to the assault, he would lift her shirt and touch her, force her to use the toilet with the door open, tie her up, lie next to her in his underwear and ask personal questions, including when her period was due.

In the shower, she briefly enjoyed the feeling of warm water on her face before Mohammad shouted, “quickly, quickly.”

“Then I heard it again. ‘Quickly, quickly.’ I looked and I saw him standing inside the shower and with his gun pointed at me and suddenly, this guy who used to be nice and had a friendly face, looked like a monster.”

Then the assault began. "He tried to take the towel. I covered myself, he took it off. He punched me, he pointed the gun hard at my face, I kept resisting and he got mad.

"He kept punching me, hitting me and threatening me with the gun. Eventually, I prevented him from doing what he really wanted to do. He did sexually assault me, but not in the way he wanted to.

“After he was finished, I sat on the bed and cried.”

Mohammad punished her for crying, plunging the room into darkness and threatening her with his gun. He offered her chocolate and tea, but her tears made him crueller. “You’re not allowed to be sad in Gaza,” he would tell her.

Soussana was moved to several other houses during her captivity. In the second house, she met four Israeli hostages. “It felt like heaven to whisper in Hebrew to them.” It was there that she was subjected to hours of torture. She was handcuffed, had her face taped over, a hood pulled over her head and was suspended upside down by her hands and legs.

Struggling to breathe, she heard one of her captors state: “That’s it, I’m going to throw her away. I’m going to kill her.”

Shaking uncontrollably, Soussana had the hood ripped from her face and her tormentor mocked her. They struck her repeatedly, wielding a thick wooden stick. “They hit me and humiliated me,” she said.

The terrorists kept demanding that Soussana admit she was an IDF soldier - even though she had never served. They claimed to have read articles about her and branded her a liar. They summoned the other hostages to watch her torture. “I remember seeing their faces... I felt guilty that because of me they needed to see this.”

One of the hostages pleaded with her, “I don't know if you are really the IDF or not, but if you are then tell them the truth.”

The brutal torture lasted about 40 minutes, at which point they untied her and took the handcuffs off. The two older hostages were forbidden from looking at her, while the two younger ones were ordered to convince her to confess. “I remember telling them, ‘How come you're so strong?’ They told me that they did not have any choice.

“The need to survive makes you so much stronger.”

At one point, one of the young female hostages asked Soussana if she had any final words for her family, in case Hamas killed her. “I thought to myself that this was how you feel at the end, when you are about to die. I told them to tell my mum and family that I loved them. I couldn’t stop crying.”

“Eventually, one of the girls talked with the terrorist and explained that I wasn't in the military and somehow she convinced him. She saved my life.”

For the next two weeks, Soussana was kept in the same house, where the beatings and humiliation continued. “It almost broke me, it was really difficult. But I was with Israeli people, so we were able to hold it together,” she said.

Sousanna and the older couple were separated from the two 19-year-old hostages and taken to another house. As they entered, she heard the older woman scream and saw Hamas force her down a shaft inside the house and into the tunnel network. Her captor told her, “Don’t worry, it’s like a city down there.”

She described the cramped tunnel chamber as a “coffin”. The air was suffocating. “There was no oxygen. No air. It was a tiny place. Like a grave,” she recalled.

Bombs thundered 40 metres above them and the three hostages lived in constant terror. “If something happened to the terrorist, the shaft would be closed, and we would be stuck forever. Nobody will know where we are.

“Every time the terrorists came, the three of us would say to them: ‘We can’t stay here! We can’t breathe!’”

After four days, the group were taken to another house above ground. Though it was completely dark and they were forbidden to talk, Soussana was relieved. “We were happy because we could breathe again.”

The sound of bombing eventually paused. First for five minutes, then an hour. “So we understood that something was going on. There was a ceasefire,” she said. The terrorists told the older woman that she would soon be released and the older man a short while later.

“She didn't want to leave, she wanted to stay with him. She ran to him, hugged him and she explained to him it's going to take a few more days and then he'll be out.

“We never thought the bombing and the war would continue.”

For a week after the woman’s release, Soussana remained with the older man. It was during this time that she saw him break down in tears for the first time. “He had been holding it together for his wife. That was the first time I looked after him.”

They watched the hostage release on television. Soussana had been told by her captors that Gazan civilians would kill Israeli hostages if they saw them, so was terrified of what might happen during the exchange.

Then, one day, her captor was casually cutting tomatoes for a lunchtime salad when he told her she would be released hours later. Dressed as an Arab woman, she was sent onto the street. Her captor pushed her toward an elderly Arab woman and said, “Go with her.”

“I held her hand, and we started walking like a scene from a movie,” Soussana said. She was later placed in a car with another Israeli woman, Mia Shem, also disguised as an Arab. The pair were released together, surrounded by a mob of chanting men.

After the Red Cross facilitated their handover, Soussana was taken to an Israeli base where she showered and changed clothes. A soldier pointed out the moon to her — “I put my head on his shoulder, and we both cried. I had not seen the sky for 55 days.”

Now, over a year after her release, Soussana still hopes for peace. “I am against any violence. When I was [in Gaza], I always tried to hear their side.” She noted that one of the men who tortured her had a daughter with cancer, whose life had been saved by treatment at an Israeli hospital.

She is terrified about the women still held in Gaza. Talking about her sexual assault, she said, “I was able to fight him off, but it makes me feel really scared for the women who are still there because that was a different time. It was over 400 days ago.”

She noted that Emily Damari was her neighbour in Kfar Aza and hoped too that the old man she was held hostage with would return to be reunited with his wife.

For Soussana, her life cannot begin again until the hostages are home. A trained lawyer, she has not worked since the day before she was seized and her life revolves around fighting for the other hostages and telling her story.