The mother of hostage Israeli American hostage Keith Siegel died in the United States on Monday, 424 days after he was abducted during Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.
Gladys Siegel was 97 years old.
In a post on Facebook on Tuesday, Keith’s daughter Elan Siegel wrote, “My grandmother passed away yesterday morning. My father’s mother passed away and my father couldn’t say goodbye to her because he’s been in Hamas captivity for over a year.
“Dad won’t be able to stand with us at the cemetery tomorrow, he won’t be able to say goodbye to the woman who raised him and loved him his whole life.”
Siegel, 64, was kidnapped with his wife, Aviva Siegel, 62, from their home on Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, when Hamas terrorists attacked their community, killing and abducting and torching homes. From the community of 1,000 people, 62 were killed and 19 taken hostage that day.
The couple was driven into Gaza in their own car, along with a neighbor and her two children.
Aviva was released on November 26, 2023, as part of a temporary ceasefire deal brokered by Qatar and the United States between Hamas and Israel.
Elan Siegel, the daughter of Keith Siegel, speaks to crowd of protesters at hostage families demonstration in Jerusalem’s Paris Square on May 11, 2024. (Charlie Summer/Times of Israel)
“My father was taken from his home by 20-something-year-old terrorists and is being held in dark tunnels, suffering from severe hunger and emotional and physical abuse about an hour’s drive from Tel Aviv,” Elan wrote, going on to blame the government for failing to secure another hostage deal to free her father.
“He’s in the scariest pit in the world and they’re just letting him sit there. They’re not bringing him home,” she wrote.
Her post was published hours after US President-elect Donald Trump on Monday threatened hostage holders with unprecedented American firepower if the captives are not released by the time he enters office on January 20.
The former US president’s latest warning followed Hamas’s release of a propaganda video showing American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander. It also came hours after the IDF revealed that another American-Israeli hostage — Omer Neutra — had been killed during the October 7 onslaught and that his body was being held in Gaza. Neutra had previously been thought to be alive.
Adi Alexander, father of Hamas hostage Edan Alexander, speaks at a hostage deal rally in New York, December 1, 2024. (Hostages Families Forum)
The Hamas onslaught that sparked the ongoing war in Gaza saw some 3,000 terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians.
Ninety-seven of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas that day remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
