Former Hostage Doron Katz Asher Recounts 49 Days in Gaza Captivity

Marking three years since the October 7 massacre, former hostage Doron Katz Asher, who was abducted to the Gaza Strip with her two young daughters and released after 49 days, appeared on the Kan 11 television program "Taboo" and recounted the harrowing days in captivity.

In a conversation with Hanoch Daum, Katz Asher described how she coped with the relentless hunger of her young daughters and relived the moments of breakdown during her detention. "I didn't have much to do except most of the time to tell them: 'I don't have any.' They would wake up in the morning and at first I didn't have anything to give them, so I started saving from the day before so I would have something to give them."

"The terrorists didn't have an excess of compassion for children, and in the end I operated on autopilot. My role was to protect my girls. Aviv was two and a half years old and Raz was four and a half. They went through a very brutal abduction event. They saw their grandmother, my mother, murdered right in front of their eyes," shared former hostage Doron Asher Katz.

After some time in captivity, Katz Asher realized she had to act to save the mental health of her young daughters. "In the end I understood, or rather it was an intuition, that I needed to save their souls and essentially I told them that now we are in a good place with good people who are guarding us until we can return home. The bad ones were on October 7 and they (the terrorists) are guarding us."

In the first days in captivity, the distressed mother began showing signs of distress and worrying for the lives of her daughters. "I remember I went to the bathroom, so the girls wouldn't see, and I just cried. They understood because when I came back they asked me why I was crying so I said I missed home. I couldn't grasp that it could be that the fate of my little girls would be to die in Gaza. I didn't think about myself, I didn't care."