A young hostage succeeds in imposing her dog on the terrorists during her long captivity

2023-12-01 21:27:22

Gabriela Leimberg and her 17-year-old daughter Mia were released by Hamas on Tuesday and handed over to the Red Cross. As reported The Parisian, the two Israeli hostages were carrying with them a surprise guest: their dog Bella, who had stayed with them during their 53 days of captivity. On several videos, we can see certain members of the terrorist organization visibly very surprised to see an animal appear and ask them what it is doing there. Mia, holding her dog tightly against her, seems to explain to one of them that she belongs to him.

The two women were kidnapped on October 7 in Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, which borders the Gaza Strip. When the terrorists barged inside the house, Mia was carrying her Shi Tzu in her arms. Believing it was a stuffed toy, they did not try to get rid of the dog. “It was only after a few hours that she moved a little in his hands and they realized it was a dog. An argument broke out there about what they were going to do with Bella and they ended up giving up and leaving her,” the teen’s aunt told Walla News.

The release video shows a tense conversation between Mia and a Hamas man who spotted her getting out of the car with the dog. “One of the Hamasniks came to take Bella and said ‘What is this?’ And she answered him, ‘She’s mine, from home.’ She signaled to him – so far, don’t touch my dog. It wasn’t an argument, she simply made it clear to him assertively that she was coming home with her pic.twitter.com/z7R9wWwILQ

— Uri Sela (@uri_sela) November 30, 2023

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According to a teacher who visited Mia in the hospital, the teenager kept her dog in her arms at all times and shared her food with her. Bella relieved herself in the bathroom, which the high school student cleaned quickly so that her presence did not bother anyone.;

All the while, Moshe, the father and husband of the two hostages, thought the family pooch had simply disappeared in the panic on the day of the attack. He had made several calls for witnesses, but never imagined that his daughter would have been able to keep the dog with her in such conditions.