Israeli psychotherapist Noam Sagi, whose mother, Ada, was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and freed two months later, told Newsmax on Tuesday that watching the release of the last 20 living hostages was “almost like reliving the experience ourselves.”
“You know, it’s crazy how much, how many emotions can come into one pinpoint of moment when everything just exploded,” Sagi said on Newsmax’s “Wake Up America.”
“We were over, over, you know, the joy and the tears and the relief,” he added.
“It was just absolutely crazy. For us, it’s almost like reliving the experience ourselves,” he said.
Sagi’s mother was one of 78 residents taken from her kibbutz during the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.
“Yesterday, the last four live came back,” he said. “We’re still waiting for five bodies to arrive.”
Sagi said the homecomings on Monday were especially personal for his mother, who spent the day on the phone with families of the freed captives.
“She was with them on the phone and she got through,” he added.
“We almost needed to manage it, because it was not just joy. It was a lot of loss that somehow incorporated into all that,” he noted.
While the reunions were filled with relief, Sagi said the recovery process for freed hostages is far from over.
“The first and most important thing: they are back, and they are hugged by people who love them and want the best for them,” he said.
“But the little things, just to know that you can go to the toilet because you want to and don’t need to ask for permission; that if you’re hungry, you can eat; that you can see daylight, see a tree, meet someone, all these things, it’s almost like something you need to relive and relearn,” Sagi continued.
He called the rehabilitation “a long and sometimes lonely process.”
“They didn’t hear the language, they didn’t smell the people, they didn’t breathe fresh air for so long,” Sagi said.
“It’s a huge amount of information to process in a very short time. The kibbutz my mother was in for 55 years doesn’t exist anymore, and a quarter of the community is gone,” he said.
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