For Jewish News July 16 2025
A shocked audience of more than 400 people listened in silence as two of the best-known former hostages in Gaza, Aviva and Keith Siegel, recounted their harrowing experiences at the hands of their Hamas captors.
And then the audience at Finchley Synagogue rose in applause for a couple who Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis called “true heroes of the Jewish people”.
In the hour-long event — held jointly under the auspices of the United Synagogue, the Israeli embassy and the Office of the Chief Rabbi — the Siegels were engaged in conversation with Sir Ephraim as he gently teased out their terrible ordeal.
Aviva Siegel, her South African accent still strong despite having arrived in Israel when she was just eight years old, was released after 51 days in captivity; her husband Keith, who was born in America, was held in Gaza for 484 days, only having been freed in February this year.
The couple, married for more than 40 years, were kidnapped from their kibbutz near the Gaza border, Kfar Aza, on October 7 2023, being dragged through the window of their home by a group of Hamas terrorists, injuring Keith in the process. Aviva Siegel painted a picture of utter confusion at the start of the attack as they tried to find out through a kibbutz WhatsApp group what was happening. Shai, their son, is the only one of their four children to have lived on the kibbutz and Aviva did not know whether or not he had been kidnapped too.
Kfar Aza lost 64 of its members on October 7, but Aviva Siegel said all of the kibbutzniks were wearily familiar with the constant rocket attacks from Gaza, which was why she and Keith had initially tried to hide in their bomb shelter.
For the duration of her captivity in Gaza, she and Keith were held together, spending the first three days in a tunnel and then moved — sometimes with one or two other female hostages — to a variety of other underground locations. They were moved 13 times during her 51 days in Gaza; Keith, however, was relocated 33 times before his release, suffering and witnessing “severe abuse, physical, verbal, sexual…”
The couple were repeatedly told that Israel no longer existed, so that when Aviva was told she was to be released, she did not know whether to believe her captors or indeed to where she might be released.
When she was first captured, Aviva Siegel said: “It seemed like the end of the world.” She recalled the experience of a young woman captive who had clearly been sexually abused by a Hamas terrorist, but who refused to acknowledge that in front of her captors. “She told me that the Hamas man had touched her”, Aviva said, adding that she herself felt that “I had touched death.”
Aviva and Keith were separated on Day 51 of her captivity, though she did not want to leave her husband. Both of them lost weight, were frequently starved and not given access to water, and at one point were kept in an area where they found it difficult to breathe.
Keith Siegel, still gaunt after his release five months ago, said his captors tried repeatedly to convert him to Islam, telling him that “only Muslims go to heaven” and that they did not understand why he, an educated man, remained a Jew.
But he said that this approach only made him more determined to make his Jewish identity stronger, and said that he had become “motivated” to recite Jewish prayers in Gaza that he had not said since he was young. “I found strength in belonging to the Jewish people,” he said.
Unlike his wife, who did not know that their son Shai had survived until she and her children met at a hospital in Israel, Keith Siegel heard a radio programme by chance while he was still in captivity, in which he heard one of his daughters talking about the hostage situation.
For the last weeks of his captivity he was kept alone, finally in a locked room. Two days before he was due to be released, he was informed by his captors that he was to be handed over to Israel. He was made to undress and was given “new clothes, new shoes…I was transferred between about five cars before arriving at the beach in Gaza City”.
With extreme cynicism, his captors told him: “Maybe you want to say thank you to Hamas?” At the release ceremony he was given a certificate with the date of his “arrest” and told to wave to the crowd. Understandably fearful that something would go wrong, he did wave to the crowd. And he confirmed that two other hostages had been driven to the area and made to witness his release — before being driven back to Gaza.
Since their return to Israel, the Siegels have been tirelessly campaigning for the release of their fellow hostages, an estimated 50 of whom remain in Hamas’s hands. Aviva Siegel went to America 11 times to call for Keith’s release, as an American Israeli citizen. The couple, each wearing a “Bring Them Home” t-shirt, particularly highlighted the cases of twins Gali and Ziv Berman, also kidnapped from Kfar Aza, whom they have known since they were born.
Asked by the chief rabbi what they would say to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government, Aviva Siegel declared: “Stand up for your people!” The couple called on Netanyahu and President Trump “to do everything that needs to be done to get all the [remaining] 50 hostages back as soon as possible”. Keith Siegel added: “It is our responsibility to get everyone back and bring them home.”
The event was the first formal engagement for Saul Taylor, the newly-elected president of the United Synagogue, who welcomed the Seigels. He said that proceeds from the evening would go to rebuilding a kindergarten on Kibbutz Be’eri.
Daniela Grudsky-Ekstein, the Israeli embassy’s deputy ambassador, thanked the Siegels and the chief rabbi for the powerful event.