TEL AVIV: After 16 months of captivity in the Gaza Strip, Ohad Ben Ami found the strength to run toward his daughters, even cracking a joke during their emotional reunion, filled with both joy and tears.
“Dad, is it really you? I can’t believe you’re here,” said one of his daughters, her eyes wide with disbelief, as the freed Israeli-German hostage embraced her at Tel Aviv’s Ichilov Hospital, following his release by Hamas militants during the fifth hostage-prisoner swap on Saturday.
“Yes, I’m here,” Ben Ami replied, hugging his loved ones who had been waiting anxiously for his return at the hospital.
“I left XXL and came back medium,” joked the 56-year-old, who, according to doctors at the hospital, had lost a significant amount of weight in captivity.
“I have so much to catch up on. It feels like someone has ripped me away and time kept passing.
“I have a million things pending, and I need answers ... And yes, I need to know what happened that day,” said Ben Ami, referring to October 7, 2023, when Hamas militants attacked Israel.
The family reunion, away from the media spotlight but filmed and photographed by the Israeli authorities, was intimate.
The footage offered a stark contrast to those captured earlier that morning in Deir el-Balah, central Gaza, where Ben Ami, emaciated and with a short white beard, was paraded by masked Hamas militants before being released alongside two other hostages, Eli Sharabi and Or Levy.
Now free from wearing a T-shirt marked “Hamas prisoner” and freshly shaven, Ben Ami appeared to have a new lease of life as he entered the room where his three daughters and mother were waiting.
Laughter and tears filled the space while from among those gathered someone shouted: “What a handsome guy you are!“
Within moments they were catching up on the months lost in captivity. Ben Ami learnt that one of his daughters had enlisted in the Israeli army. “I’m proud of you,” he told her.
“In the initial medical assessment conducted, it is evident that Ohad returned in a severe nutritional state and had lost a significant amount of his body weight,” Gil Fire, deputy director at Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv said, adding Ben Ami had shown he was “resilient in spirit.”
Ben Ami and his wife were seized by Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023, from kibbutz Beeri, close to the Gaza border, during the Hamas attack that ignited the war.
Two of their daughters, who were with them that day, survived the attack.
His wife was released on November 29, 2023, during a week-long truce, the first of the war.
Sharabi, also from Beeri, did not have the chance for such a reunion.
His wife and two daughters were killed in the attack, and it appears unlikely that he was aware of this at the time of his release.
Draped in an Israeli flag, Sharabi was welcomed with tears at Sheba Hospital in Ramat Gan by his two sisters and brother, his head covered with a talith, the Jewish prayer shawl.
The reunion of Levy with his family was a sober one, marked by long embraces and crying.
He and his wife, Einav Levy, were attending the Nova festival, the site of the worst massacre committed on October 7, where he was taken hostage while she was killed.
