Hostage and saviour recuperate in SA bushveld

A freed hostage from Gaza and the man who moved mountains to try track her down during her captivity have both experienced a life-changing, faith restoring trip to South Africa.

“I love this country and this beautiful Jewish community,” said Amit Soussana, who spent 55 harrowing days in hell after Hamas terrorists abducted her from her Kfar Aza home on 7 October.

“I never thought I’d be in a heavenly place like this, embraced by such warmth,” she said. A video clip taken last week shows a smiling Soussana in the African bush surrounded by a herd of elephants.

“People came up to me in Nando’s asking me to bless them because they see me as a living miracle,” she said.

“I look up at the African sky, and remind myself that things could have turned out very differently,” she said. Though she has experienced moments of joy for the first time in months, they have been tempered by feelings of guilt, anguish, and deep concern for the hostages still in captivity.

“I cannot move on with my life until every hostage is returned home,” she told the SA Jewish Report.

Soussana, 41, was the first person to speak out publicly about the sexual abuse and torture she suffered at the hands of her captors in Gaza. All this while human rights groups turned a blind eye to reports of abuse despite indisputable evidence.

Soussana, who was released from captivity on the last day of a weeklong truce in late November, was in South Africa last week accompanied by her friend and former longtime boyfriend, Eran Zaitoun, 45. He became her family’s pillar of strength in the days and weeks following her abduction when her whereabouts were unknown.

“There was absolute chaos in those first few days. We had no idea where Amit was and the Gaza envelope was in turmoil,” said Zaitoun, recalling how smoke was still rising from burning homes, bodies were lying in the street, and the air was thick with shock and fear. The ground was littered with debris, broken lives scattered among the ruins, he recalled.

He rushed to be with her parents in Sderot, knowing they would need help.

“It was a war zone there. Her mother, Mira, was in a bad way. Every day became a desperate search for Amit,” he said.

He recalls going to the main police headquarters to search for clues. “When I arrived, there were a handful of people. When I left, there were hundreds of people queueing outside desperate to find loved ones. That’s when I realised the scale of the devastation,” he said.

Zaitoun made it his life’s mission to find out what happened to Soussana. When her family became almost paralysed by fear and uncertainty, he stepped up, shouldering their burden until she was found.

“There was nothing left of her home. It had been burnt down,” he said.

He took pieces of her clothing for DNA samples, and gathered photographs of her wearing distinctive jewellery, hoping these small details might provide crucial clues to help identify her.

After three agonising weeks, the family received a visit from a security officer. He arrived with an iPad to show the family raw video footage of Hamas terrorists abducting a woman whom they suspected was Amit, but needed confirmation about.

An eery, grainy video, now widely known, shows a woman being dragged across open fields by about eight terrorists from Kfar Aza into Gaza. She can be seen wildly kicking and resisting her captors, who eventually beat her into submission, punching her in the face.

“That was me,” Soussana said. “I was still in my pyjamas, and had tried to wrap my body in my blanket to cover myself before they took me.

“I knew it was Amit even though it was hard to tell. Her sisters weren’t sure, and her mother refused to watch the video, she was so traumatised,” Zaitoun said.

Three days later, the same officer arrived, this time with solid information confirming 100% that the woman in the video was Soussana.

“I cannot explain our emotions. On the one hand, we were ecstatic because we now knew she was taken alive, but we were distressed and feared for her safety at the same time,” he said.

Soussana believed she was taken to a large house belonging to a high-ranking Hamas officer and his family. The family soon fled when the Israel Defense Forces advanced, and she was then held alone in the house, chained up in darkness in one of the children’s bedrooms. “There were Sponge Bob pictures on the wall,” she said, and she was forced at gunpoint to obey her abusive Hamas captor, whom she said went by the name Muhammad.

“I begged him not to keep me in the dark. I was so afraid,” she told the SA Jewish Report.

Amit revealed some of the horrors of her experience in an interview with The New York Times and for Sheryl Sandberg’s 60-minute documentary film titled Screams Before Silence about the sexual violence committed by Hamas.

Being in South Africa has rejuvenated this remarkable pair, whose epic tale of survival, resilience, and hope has led to a profound bond between them.

During a layover in Ethiopia on their way to South Africa, Zaitoun had a life-changing experience. Spotting a Chabad rabbi praying nearby, he felt an overwhelming surge of gratitude and a need to reconnect with his spirituality.

“Amit was returned to us against all odds. I felt overwhelmed with gratitude in that moment seeing that rabbi, and decided to approach him,” he said.

“It was early morning, and the rabbi asked me to return in 10 minutes, which I did. He could see I was a little shy, perhaps embarrassed. This was new for me, being a secular Jew from Israel. I put on tefillin for the first time since my Barmitzvah,” Zaitoun said. The moment, he said, was deeply spiritual and profoundly transformative.

The pair were brought out to South Africa by Base Community and the Jewish National Fund (JNF).

Saul Jassinowsky, the founder of the initiative, said, “It’s a special place for former hostages to visit and exhale after experiencing unimaginable trauma. The Base and JNF are working to bring out more hostages, with many upcoming planned trips, and to facilitate whatever we can for them.”

Said Rabbi Aharon Zulberg of The Base, “This partnership and project has presented us with a special opportunity to be connected to our brothers and sisters in Israel. We have seen the positive effect on everyone in each trip that we have been privileged to facilitate. It embodies the spirit of renewal and hope through kindness, which is so much of what our community is about. We have been able to have an impact on those at the epicentre of what happened on 7 October. At the same time, our heroic guests have experienced a taste of our unique community.”

Jassinowsky heard Zaitoun’s moving tefillin story, and connected him to Adam and Chaya Michels of The Shalom Tefillin and Mezuza Fund, who presented him with a new set of tefillin.

“The fund holds a very special place in our hearts as it was created in memory of our precious baby boy, whom we lost more than 10 years ago,” said Adam, “Through this fund, we have found a way to honour his memory by helping fellow ‘Yidden’ to fulfil the sacred mitzvot of tefillin and mezuzot, bringing a spark of holiness into their homes and lives.”

The couple returned home with feelings of gratitude and renewed hope.