US toddler who watched parents die among freed Israeli hostages

A four-year-old American girl who crawled out from beneath the bloodied body of her father before being kidnapped by Hamas was one of 17 hostages released by the terror group last night.

Avigail Idan, a dual US-Israeli citizen, spent her 51 days in captivity in Gaza after seeing both her parents murdered on October 7.

In a hastily-arranged press conference, US president Joe Biden said: “She’s been through a terrible trauma.”

Avigail was one of 14 Israeli citizens, one of whom also had Russian citizenship, who were handed over yesterday, the third day of fraught and emotional transfers under Israel’s four-day ceasefire deal with Hamas.

Most of those freed were from the kibbutzim of Kfar Aza and Nahal Oz.

Three Thai nationals were also released under a separate agreement.

Abigail Idan

Abigail Idan (4) was reportedly in her father Roy’s arms when the 43-year-old photojournalist and her mother, Smadar, were shot and killed by Hamas on October 7.

The youngster was said to have crawled out “from under her father’s body” and fled to a neighbour’s home in southern Israel, where she was later kidnapped.

Her siblings, aged 6 and 10, also witnessed their parents’ murder but escaped unharmed by hiding in a closet for 14 hours, relatives said.

Elma Avraham

At the other end of the scale was Elma Avraham (84).

She was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz after being unable to close her safe room door because it was too heavy.

As the Hamas rampage unfolded, she told her son Uri Rawitz on the phone in Tel Aviv that she could hear men shouting in Arabic outside.

His brother, who also lives in the kibbutz, was locked in his safe room and unable to help.

He was rescued about 10 hours later by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF), but when they went to look in Ms Avraham’s safe room, they found the door open and the bed tipped over.

They later heard that she had told a neighbour at about 11am: “There’s a terrorist in my house.”

She had remarried a widowed kibbutz member years ago, helped raise his two young children and they had another child together, making Elma Avraham a mother of five.

Agam, Gal, Tal and Chen Goldstein-Almog

Three children from the Goldstein-Almog family − Agam (17), Gal (11) and Tal (9) − were seized along with their mother, Chen, from Kibbutz Kfar Aza.

Their father, Nadav, and their eldest sister, Yam, were murdered on the same day while sheltering in the safe room of the family home.

Yam is believed to have stayed with her father in the room because he was recovering from surgery and was not very mobile. She frantically sent messages for help as the terrorists roamed through their neighbourhood. Her family are still unsure of the sequence of events in the family home.

Chen is believed to have spent her birthday on October 23 in Gaza − the same day her daughter and husband were buried. It is not the first time the family has been blighted by terrorism. Five members of the Almog family were killed during a suicide bombing in the city of Haifa in 2003.

Ofri, Yuval, Oria and Hagar Brodutch

Hagar (40), Ofri (10), Yuval (8) and Oria Brodutch (4) were abducted from the kibbutz of Kfar Aza on October 7.

Avihai Brodutch, the father and husband, did his best to defend the kibbutz while his loved ones sheltered in the safe room, but when he returned, wounded, to look for his family, they were gone. He thought they were dead, but found out days later they had been abducted. He said at the time: “I felt like I won the lottery.”

Daughter Ofri turned 10 in captivity. Meanwhile her father became one of the more vocal family members in the campaign to bring home the hostages, one of the first to sit outside the defence ministry in Tel Aviv demanding their return.

“Do you know why my family was abducted to Gaza?” Mr Brodutch shouted in a Channel 12 interview on November 11. “Because there wasn’t an army to defend us. Hamas is tiny next to Israel the giant.”

Dafna and Ela Elyakim

Sisters Dafna Elyakim (15) and Ela (8) were kidnapped by terrorists who live-streamed the storming of the girls’ father Noam’s home in Nahal Oz.

Noam, his partner, Dikla Arava, and her 16-year-old son, Tomer, were also captured but their bodies later found near the Gaza border.

Dafna and Ella were presumed to be alive after an unverified photo of them in Gaza appeared on a Telegram channel. They were in clothes that were not their own and Ela had two fingers bandaged. Their mother, Maayan, told The Telegraph earlier this month that the wait was getting “harder and harder” with each passing day.

“I think about what I will say to my girls when I see them, but I don’t know,” she said. “It won’t be like coming back from holiday, they will be coming back from hell.” (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd 2023)

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