Freed Israeli Hostage Who Wrote ‘Thank You’ Letter Describes Captivity as ‘Gruesome’

Danielle Aloni, 45, a freed Israeli hostage who was purportedly the author of a “thank you” letter to her Hamas captors, told Israeli television this weekend how brutal her abduction was, and how she and her six-year-old daughter, Emilia, endured hell.

As Breitbart News reported last week, anti-Israel activists circulated a “thank you” letter, purportedly from Aloni, thanking the terrorists profusely for how they treated her daughter like a “queen,” and wishing that they could be friends outside of the war:

We are apparently parting tomorrow, but I would request to thank you from the depths of my heart for the extraordinary humanitarianism that you showed to my daughter, Emelia.

You were, to her, like two fathers, you invited her to your room at every opportunity that she wanted.

She is leaving with the feeling that you are all her friends, and not just friends, but very, very good friends.

Thank you, thank you, thank you for the many hours of babysitting. …

In an interview with Israel’s Channel 11, she said (translated from Hebrew):

דניאל אלוני, בת 45, שוחררה משבי חמאס לאחר 49 ימים: “הבנות שלנו ראו דברים שאף אחד לא צריך לראות, זה סרט אימה. לא היה סדר יום, ישנים, בוכים וכל יום נוסף שעובר הוא נצח. אנשים יכולים למות כי החליטו פשוט לרצוח אותם” pic.twitter.com/rXaWcnYyYJ

— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) December 2, 2023

On the 7th of October we were abducted, with brutality, from our home.

Our daughters saw things that children of this age, or any age, should not see.

A horror movie — you feel that you want to pinch yourself and wake up from this movie.

I’m talking and I’m shaking, excuse me …

It was gruesome, it was frightening. There’s no order to the day. There’s nothing.

You sleep, you cry.

Each additional day that passes is an eternity that doesn’t end.

Hamas also forced Aloni to appear in a propaganda video, attacking Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and blaming him for the terror attack. Hamas made propaganda videos of other hostages before it released them in which they claimed to have been treated well. One such video even featured Mia Shem, who was shot in the arm and whom Hamas treated with a veteranarian instead of a proper doctor.

Other reports of torture by Hamas have continued to emerge, including starvation and beatings.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of the new biography, Rhoda: ‘Comrade Kadalie, You Are Out of Order’. He is also the author of the recent e-book, Neither Free nor Fair: The 2020 U.S. Presidential Election. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.