PEACE GESTURE BY FREED HOSTAGE IN THE FACE OF EVIL

Freed grandma 'went through hell' but shakes captor's hand and wishes him peace

- Cyril Dixon

AN ISRAELI grandmother became a symbol of humanity amid the brutality of the Middle East war yesterday after her release from captivity by Hamas.

Yochi Lifshitz, 85, said she "went through hell" as she was dragged from her home, kidnapped, beaten and imprisoned for 16 days in the terrorists' warren of tunnels beneath Gaza.

Kind

But as she started to walk away from her two masked captors who brandished machine guns, she turned back to one and reached out to grasp his hand, saying in Hebrew "Shalom", which means peace.

The gunman held her hand for a moment, accepting her good wishes.

Explaining why she made such an extraordinarily kind gesture towards one of the killers who snatched her and others in a murderous raid at the Nir Oz kibbutz, she said: "Because they treated us very nicely." The response was fitting for a woman who, along with her stillcaptive husband Oded, 83, has been a peace activist all her life.

Yochi, short for Yocheved, was released with Nurit Cooper, 79, at the Rafah Crossing between Gaza and Egypt in a Red Cross-organised handover on Monday night.

The gran, below, who uses a wheelchair, looked frail but was smiling as the two women were welcomed back by aid workers and taken by ambulance to Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital.

Yet the hostage nightmare continues for Yochi, her family and hundreds of other Israelis and foreign nationals.

Oded remains a Hamas prisoner along with more than 200 people kidnapped October 7 the on day 1,400 Israelis were brutally slain in a massacre similar to the pogroms - violent attacks - which targeted Jews in the 19th and 20th centuries in Europe.