Parents of hostage Liri Albag say ‘she’s not the same girl’ in Hamas video

The parents of hostage surveillance soldier Liri Albag said in interviews broadcast Friday that the video of their daughter which Hamas released last week showed she was pale, frightened and not her regular self.

Shira and Eli Albag have asked Israeli media not to publish the video of their daughter, citing a desire to preserve her dignity.

However, they said they had expected members of the government to watch it and were dismayed that some had not.

While Hamas mostly scripted the video, certain phrases were unmistakably Liri’s and showed how desperate she was to be free, her parents said.

In the three-and-a-half-minute clip of Liri Albag that Hamas issued last Saturday, the captive soldier is visibly distraught and pleads to be released.

Since the video’s release “we haven’t been able to get out of bed, [and] even if we get up you see a half-dead person,” Eli Albag told the Kan public broadcaster.

“It’s a pit — the darkest place, the lowest place. Worse than we thought,” he said. “It’s still sitting on me, as though I’m carrying a truck.”

Speaking to Channel 13, Eli Albag said that when the video was released “we were sitting in the living room and suddenly saw a picture of Liri and a sign of life.”

“My two daughters were on the floor and my wife was howling, and I didn’t know whom to go to first to hold and try to console,” he said. “I heard Shira… call out ‘My Liri’ and sob. We gave her water and she fainted.”

“I shouted to them that we need to be happy that she’s alive,” he continued. “Look at the girl — she’s alive.”

“When I saw it I felt a punch in the gut,” he added.

Shira Albag, who is set to address Saturday night’s rally for a hostage deal in Tel Aviv, told Channel 12 that she only watched the video on the day it was released.

“I haven’t seen it since, but it’s always [playing] in my mind,” she said. “I want to remember Liri as I know her, not the way she looks there: faint, frightened, shaking.”

“She’s not the same girl — she’s very frightened, her eyes are hollow,” said Shira Albag. “My Liri has always been self-confident, fearless, strong — I saw that she was extremely pale, that she has lost a ton of weight… I saw the black under her eyes, I saw that she hadn’t seen daylight in a long time.”

Eli Albag, meanwhile, told Channel 13 he has watched the video hundreds of times.

“I look at every word, every letter” in the video, he said. “She’s bloated, and we spoke to doctors about her condition and they said it’s from the lack of food and protein — [the hostages] just eat bread.”

“There is also the medical issue of the eyes, because Liri wears glasses and in the video she appears without glasses,” he said.

At various points in the video, he added, “We see her crouched and hunched over — we understand it took a long time in front of the camera. We asked hostages who’ve been released what it was like when they were filmed and they said it was very difficult.”

The parents told Channel 12 that their daughter’s plea for release was not entirely scripted by Hamas.

“I think they told her [to say] most of it, but there is one sentence she said, something like ‘it’s hell, we’re in a crazy world,’” said Eli Albag.

“‘A crazy journey,’” his wife corrected him. “Those are Liri’s words.”

“And it’s certain Liri said that from the bottom of her heart,” said the father. “And she also said, ‘Bring me back, I’m just 19,’ and that’s also Liri.”

Asked if they wanted to see the hostages returned in a military operation, Shira Albag said: “Absolutely not.”

“We know what orders Hamas has given the captors — kill the hostages the moment they sense the IDF is approaching,” she said. “Liri and all the hostages need to come back in a deal, only a deal.”

“Heroically rescuing the bodies that were retrieved yesterday — as far as I’m concerned, that’s not doing everything [to save the hostages], because they were alive,” she added, referring to this week’s retrieval of the bodies of Youssef and Hamza Ziyadne, a father and son who were abducted from Kibbutz Holit on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.

After Hamas issued the video of Liri Albag, Netanyahu called the hostage’s parents. “The time is ripe and he will do everything to bring back the hostages,” Eli Albag told Channel 12.

Shira Albag said she “begged and cried” for the premier to bring back her daughter.

“I gave birth to Liri, but today she’s in their hands,” she said. “She’s also a hostage of the government, of the State of Israel which is not currently doing everything to bring [the hostages] back.”

“And while she’s not back,” she added, “they are not doing everything.”

“I know we’ve asked for the video not to be published, but I do expect all decision-makers and everyone in the government to watch the video,” she said, assailing Regional Cooperation Minister David Amsalem, who said he hadn’t watched the clip.

“Before he goes to bed at night, he should take the clip and watch it and imagine his daughter, and his son, sitting there in the tunnels, in the dark,” she said. “We’ll see if he sleeps well.”

Eli Albag, who has faced violent attacks from Netanyahu supporters due to his robust activism for a deal, suggested to Kan that the premier was not doing enough to stem the attacks.

“If the commander chooses otherwise, things would be different,” he said.

He also expressed outrage at Netanyahu’s staff for allegedly leaking an IDF-captured Hamas document in a distorted manner last year that bolstered the premier’s talking points against a hostage deal.

Critics of the government accuse Netanyahu of thwarting a hostage deal to keep fighting in Gaza, per the demand of his far-right coalition partners.

Netanyahu’s spokesman Eli Feldstein is suspected of having leaked the stolen military intelligence to a German tabloid to counteract public rage at the premier’s failure to make a hostage deal, which reached a fever pitch after Israel recovered the bodies of six recently slain hostages in late August.

“Apparently, because of them, my daughter is still there,” he said. “What did they want to do with that document? Sway public opinion? [Say the pro-hostage deal] rallies are advantageous for Hamas?”

“He had that letter for three months,” said Eli Albag, apparently referring to Feldstein. “Why did he choose to release it the very day six of my brothers and sisters were killed?”

It is believed that 94 of the hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 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 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the 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.