Released hostage Ofer Calderon was hospitalized at the Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv on Friday after he contracted flu that developed into pneumonia, his family said, a week after he was first released from the hospital following his return to Israel.
In a statement, the family said Calderon, 54, was in good condition and would make a full recovery. Calderon was limiting his exposure to people other than his brother Nissan and sister-in-law Sharon, the family said, adding that the three had Shabbat dinner at the hospital Friday night.
Calderon, a dual French-Israeli citizen, was released from Hamas captivity on February 1, 2025, as part of the terror group’s ceasefire and hostage deal with Israel. After his release, Calderon was taken to Sheba for six days. He has reported being held in an underground tunnel in “severe hunger conditions” and denied sunlight, medical care and hygiene for months on end.
His release, alongside ex-captives Yarden Bibas and Keith Siegel, was the fourth hostage release of the deal’s first phase, which includes women, children, civilian men aged over 50 and those considered especially unwell.
Hamas is expected to release three more hostages on Saturday: Sagui Dekel-Chen, Sasha Troufanov and Iair Horn.
Calderon, his daughter Sahar and son Erez were snatched from their home at Kibbutz Nir Oz when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed Gaza border communities on October 7, 2023, to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
Freed hostage Ofer Calderon in an IDF helicopter en route to Sheba Medical Center after his release from Hamas captivity in Gaza, February 1, 2025. (IDF)
Calderon’s two teenage children were released during the weeklong truce and hostage release in November 2023.
In Nir Oz, 117 people — one in four residents — were murdered or kidnapped. The community has since relocated to a designated neighborhood in Kiryat Gat.
At a ceremony in the designated neighborhood on Thursday, Nissan Calderon said his brother was “born anew” after his return following 484 days in captivity.
However, he said, “Ofer came back tired, depressed mentally and physically, and mainly, disappointed in the state that abandoned him on October 7 and abandoned him all the days until he came home.”
Seventy-three of the hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7, 2023, remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas has so far released 21 hostages — civilians, soldiers and Thai nationals — during a ceasefire that began in January.
Pro-hostage deal, anti-government protesters rally outside the IDF headquarters in Tel Aviv, February 8, 2025. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)
The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 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 body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
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