Pa F peree ro W f t ee he k l Yey ar
Post trauma Honouring our heroes
PROUD VOICE OF OUR COMMUNITY 18 January 2024
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8 Shvat 5784
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Issue No.1350 •
Meet the Jewish lawyer who represented the wrongly accused Page 25
Glittering JVN awards night P16
@JewishNewsUK
One hundred DUNGEON VOICES days of grief
Thousands unite for Israel in Trafalgar Square Page 9
Tunnel exhibit recreates hostages’ ordeal, page 11
Elderly hostage ‘sold’ during Gaza captivity Startling details of Ada Sagi’s 54 days in hands of Hamas
Reunited: Noam with Ada
Shocking details emerged this week about the ordeal of Israeli hostage Ada Sagi, who spent 54 days in Hamas captivity, in an interview with her London-based son, writes Jenni Frazer. Noam Sagi revealed that his 75-yearold mother had been “sold” to another terrorist group, Islamic Jihad, and held in a civilian apartment belonging to a lawyer before finally being released. On Monday, after the screening of a short video about Nir Oz kibbutz and the frantic text messages sent by residents
about the invading terrorists, Noam described what his mother, a teacher of Arabic and Hebrew, endured in Gaza. He told Jewish News journalist Sandy Rashty at St John’s Wood Synagogue: “The first thing the terrorists did after they took her was throw away her glasses and put the back of a kalashnikov on her head. “They put her on the back of a motorbike and attached the inside of her heel to the exhaust so that it burned. This was something they did to all the hostages
as a way of marking them. Ten minutes later, she was in Khan Yunis [in the south of the Gaza Strip]. “For all of her captivity, she was just 10 minutes away from home.” Since Ada’s release she has spent a great deal of time talking to the Israeli security services “because she knows so much. She figured out what was going on and she understood it at the same time. “When [the terrorists] listened to Al-Jazeera, she would put her ear to the door. She is very resourceful. She was
held as a human shield on the top floor of a house, together with another person. That room was sealed.” The house was owned by a lawyer, Noam revealed. “She was sold to Islamic Jihad, so she knew it was a business transaction so, in order to get money for her, they needed to keep her safe. They called her ‘diamond’ — and she used that to her advantage. She was the only one who came out of Gaza without traces of drugs in her blood.” Looking back at the terrible morning Continued on page 3