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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
Beaten with a stick, thrown over a motorcycle like a sack and dragged into a subterranean network of tunnels inside Gaza, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz spent 16 days as a Hamas hostage.
Released suddenly, alongside Nurit Cooper, 69, Lifshitz is one of four hostages — out of more than 200 taken into Gaza by Hamas militants in the October 7 attack — who have emerged, seemingly in good health, in a process mediated by Qatar, Egypt and the International Committee of the Red Cross. She is the first to speak publicly of her ordeal.
Hours after her release, she stood outside Ichilov Hospital in central Israel, and told her story, both surreal and sordid, to a bank of reporters.
“I went through a hell we never thought we could reach,” she said. “I went through a nightmare we couldn’t have imagined.”
At least 1,400 civilians and soldiers were killed in the…