Child Hostages Back In Israel Only Speaking In Whispers, Trouble Sleeping: Report

[Valin]

The Daily Wire

“Their whole reality has collapsed.”
Hank Berrien
Dec 20, 2023

Doctors working with children who were hostages held by Hamas after the October 7 massacre of 1200 Israelis are discovering how traumatic the ordeal for the children was and how much it has affected them.

The children seized by Hamas ranged in age from 10 months to 18 years old. Some were held alone. Israeli doctors found that most of the children had lost between 10% to 15% of their body weight, The Wall Street Journal reported.

But the behavior that the doctors found most unsettling was that the children spoke in whispers, slowly gathering the courage to ask if they could look out the window or open a door, Efrat Bron-Harlev, chief executive of the Schneider Children’s Medical Center, said, adding, “They looked like shadows of children.” He said that when the famished children were asked why they ate in such small quantities, they answered they had to save some for later.

“I’ve never seen anything like that before,” Renana Eitan, chair of psychiatry at the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center, said. “We feel as a group that we have to rewrite the textbook.”

Adult hostages who were released back to Israel said the Hamas terrorists who seized the children routinely gave them benzodiazepines and other drugs to keep them quiet; many of the children, now used to the drugs, have trouble sleeping.

(Snip)