This article contains graphic descriptions of violence, captivity, and injury. Reader discretion is advised.
More than 1,000 days after she was dragged from a video captors staged for the cameras and became one of the enduring images of Israel's darkest hour, Rimon Buchshtab-Kirsht has broken her silence. In her first interview since being freed in November 2023, she described in unflinching detail the abduction that tore her from her husband Yagev Buchshtab, the months she spent shielding him in captivity, and the day she learned he had been murdered by his captors.
The Abduction
Rimon and Yagev were asleep in their home in Kibbutz Nirim on the morning of October 7 when rocket sirens and their five dogs woke them. They hid in a bedroom with a faulty safe room door, taking turns lying to relatives on the phone that they were safe. When a terrorist forced the front door open holding one of Yagev's guitars, Rimon says she cut his hand with a kitchen knife before the couple pinned the door shut with their own weight, refusing to separate even as gunmen tried to pull them apart. Their shirts were torn in the struggle. When the terrorists finally forced their way in, they dragged the couple along the pavement outside, beating them severely enough that Rimon suffered burns from the concrete, a broken jaw, several broken teeth, and a broken hand. They were forced onto a cart, driven to the edge of the kibbutz, and made to walk barefoot in their pajamas through open fields toward Gaza.
The Drive Into Gaza
Rimon described being pushed into a car for what she called a tour through Gaza, during which she covered Yagev's eyes so he would not see the carnage in the streets. She has said she deliberately looked at every body they passed so she could remember and, if possible, later pass on details that might help identify the dead to their families, including a woman she saw being dragged partially off a motorcycle.
Held in a Cage
The couple was eventually separated from a larger group of hostages and held in the home of a Hamas operative in his sixties, before later being confined in a cage inside a tunnel network beneath Khan Younis. Their captors, she said, resented that the couple stayed physically close, and negotiations over whether they could hold hands during the day or embrace at night became a recurring source of friction. On one occasion, when guards moved to strike Yagev for snoring in his sleep, Rimon says she instinctively grabbed a fork from the floor and drove it into a captor's hand, the same man she would later confront on camera during her release.
Pulling Her Own Tooth
Among the most severe injuries from the initial beating was a shattered tooth that needed to come out. When two captors arrived, one holding pliers, to extract it themselves, Rimon insisted on doing it herself rather than let them touch her. She told Yagev to shut himself in the bathroom and cover his ears so he would not have to hear her scream. She has described the moment as a flash of pain like being struck in the face, followed by a scream she couldn't suppress even though screaming underground was forbidden.
Sinwar and the Bargain
At one point during their captivity, Yahya Sinwar himself came to where the hostages were held and asked Rimon to write out captives' names, ages, and points of origin by hand, in Hebrew block letters, for a propaganda video. She has said she used the moment to negotiate directly with him, asking that she and Yagev be moved out of the cage and into the tunnels with other hostages in exchange for her cooperation, a promise Sinwar kept.
Medical Neglect and Improvised Care
Beyond the tooth extraction, Rimon described weeks of medical neglect, with captors offering little beyond basic painkillers for her burns, broken bones, and Yagev's breathing difficulties, which required an inhaler she says she later hid inside her bra to keep it from being confiscated.
The Separation
The couple maintained an unusually close bond throughout captivity, keeping a shared notebook where they wrote down plans for life after release, including a wish to have a daughter together. That closeness ended when hostages began to be released in batches under the November 2023 deal and guards informed the couple they would be separated, a moment Rimon has described as devastating for them both. Fellow hostage Yarden Bibas, who was released more than a year later, tried to comfort them, telling Rimon he understood better than anyone what it meant to be torn from someone you love inside what he called that terrible hell known as Gaza.
Release and Loss
Rimon was freed on November 28, 2023, in the fifth batch of that exchange, and became widely recognized in Israel for verbally confronting her captor as she walked toward Red Cross custody. Yagev remained behind. Hamas announced his death the following February, and his remains were recovered from a Khan Younis tunnel in August 2024. Rimon has said she now understands he was shot beside five elderly hostages, based on the position in which his body was found.
Life Since
She has described the years since as an ongoing struggle with flashbacks, panic attacks, and a slow, uneven recovery, compounded by what she called shrinking state support for returned hostages over time. A recent public appeal for financial help led to a grassroots fundraising campaign now underway on her behalf, coordinated in part through an Israeli reality show's charitable initiative.
