Doreen Katz Asher says her daughters “remember every detail” of October 7th.
How they woke up to the sound of sirens and hid in their shelter. Scenes get closer. When the doors opened, his grandfather ran out of the shelter to avoid Hamas snipers seeing those hiding inside. How was he taken? How they left the shelter door open, hoping other attackers would think it was already invaded and move on. That's not how it works.
“Another terrorist group came in and took us,” Asher tells CNN.
Asher, his mother and his daughters, five-year-old Ras and two-year-old Aviv, were thrown into the back of a tractor with other kibbutz hostages before the gunmen opened fire. Asher was shot in the back; Aviv was shot in the leg; The mother was shot dead.
Asher, 34, and her daughters were taken to Gaza, where they were housed first in a home and then in a hospital, before being released during a temporary ceasefire between Israel and Hamas in November.
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Asher described the nearly 50 days he spent in captivity, the “psychological warfare” he endured, the conditions he was held in, and the guilt he felt after his release, while many others — including Kady Moses, 79, her daughters' grandfather – is in captivity.
Asher and her daughters were first taken to a family's apartment in Gaza. “My daughters were by my side and they stitched up my wounds on the bed without anesthesia,” Asher recalls.
Nir Oz was one of the kibbutz hardest hit by a Hamas attack on October 7, killing a quarter of the community or taking hostages (CNN).
After the Oct. 7 terrorist attack, which he called “a war movie,” Asher tried to reassure his daughters that the danger was over. “I told them that there are no more terrorists and now we are with good people who will protect us until we return home”, he says.
All three were watched by the house owner's children and grandchildren throughout the day. Asher never knew their names, but he was able to communicate with his father, who he said spoke Hebrew as he worked in Israel.
While Asher and her daughters were not physically harmed, the woman vouches that she was subjected to “psychological warfare.”
“They didn't give us much information, they mainly tried to say that Hamas wants to release us, but nobody in Israel cares about us”, highlights Asher. “We won't go back to live in the kibbutz because it's not our home – it's not where we belong.”
But he said he didn't believe them – and the sound of fighting outside the building in Gaza “we knew something was going on to take us home, to put pressure on Hamas to release us.”
16 days later, Asher and her daughters were taken from the apartment to an “alleged” hospital in the southern Gaza city of Khan Yunis. Why is it considered?
Because a hospital is “a place that's supposed to take care of people, but instead it was taken over by Hamas, and they used it to hide hostages,” Asher explains.
The Israeli military has repeatedly asserted that Hamas hides terrorist infrastructure in and around Gaza's civilian institutions, such as hospitals — a claim denied by the militant group. The US said Hamas used the largest al-Shifa hospital in Gaza as a command center and place to hold hostages. Asher did not say where she was being held.
Asher joined the other hostages in the hospital compound – the first he had met since being taken to Gaza.
Then he got some medicine when his daughters got sick while he was home, “but it wasn't enough.”
When Aviva developed a fever, Asher put her in the sink with cold water to bring her temperature down. “She was screaming and we were told to be quiet, but the little girl had a fever and I had to take care of her somehow.” They stayed in the hospital for almost five weeks.
Israelis and family members of hostages protest in front of the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, December 16, 2023, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu called for more to be done to free the remaining hostages in Gaza (Ilya Yefimovich/Alliance/dpa/AP)
When asked what the darkest moment was, Asher had no doubts: “Surprisingly, the day we were released.”
When they were “kidnapped” from the hospital in a Hamas vehicle, the woman had no idea where she was being taken. “No one told us we would be released, so it was very scary to travel the streets of Gaza,” he recalled.
According to her, thousands of people on the streets – including children and the elderly – tried to knock on the car and its windows. Asher feared he would be beaten to death.
“It was the first time in a month and a half that Ross said to me, 'Mom, I'm scared,'” Asher recalled.
In total, 105 people were released by Hamas during the temporary conflict with Israel that began on November 24 and ended on December 1. Videos capturing the moments when the hostages were handed over to the Red Cross often show Hamas members behaving kindly towards the hostages, holding the hands of elderly women and, for example, pulling them out of cars.
“It's a great show,” Asher says. “Before I was released, my daughters and I were barefoot for 50 days. We were cold because they wore short sleeves in November.” But before they were handed over to Red Cross workers, they were given shoes and Hamas members “dressed me in a beautiful dress.”
When they returned to Israel, Asher and her daughters were taken to a hospital in Tel Aviv, discharged and returned home. The first thing the daughters did was “go outside to feel the air on your skin”.
“All this time we will see the light.. Their first job is to run outside, here in our backyard.
Now the family is trying to get back to normal. But Asher says trauma easily resurfaces.
“One day they saw a tractor here and asked if the bad guys were here. I had to tell them no, that tractor didn't belong to the bad guys,” explains Asher. “A tractor isn't something that hurts you, it's something we work on in the field, in construction.”
Asher was still grieving his mother's death. “When we were hostages, all my energy was devoted to the girls because if I lost myself in grief there would be no one to look after them”, she recalled. “I'm acting on autopilot… I'm still on autopilot.”
The relief she felt when she was freed was tainted by the knowledge that others were in Gaza. As of December 29, 106 hostages remained in Gaza, along with the bodies of 23 people killed, according to the Israeli Prime Minister's Office.
Among them was Kady Moses, Asher's mother's companion. “We are waiting for him, he is going to be 80 years old and he is off medicine”, says the woman.
The Quds Brigades, the armed wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another Islamist group operating in Gaza, in December released a video of Kadi Moses and another hostage, 47-year-old Kadi Katsir, speaking on camera, calling on the Israeli government. Arrangements should be made for his release. “He was so thin – we saw him on video,” the woman says.
“I can't understand what happened to my family, I can't understand their inhumanity. People who kill people in their beds. Who does that? It's not human.”
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