Hamas Drugged Youngest Hostages With Valium, Ketamine to Keep Them Quiet: Report

Israeli hostages held by Hamas in Gaza were fed drugs to keep them docile, including Valium and ketamine, according to doctors who have been treating the traumatized former hostages since their return to Israel in the past several weeks.

Children were said to be a particular focus of the kidnappers.

“They wanted to control the kids, and sometimes it’s difficult to control young children, adolescents. And they know that if they drug them they will be quiet,” said Renana Eitan, a psychiatrist at a Tel Aviv hospital who has been treating returnees.

“One of the girls was given ketamine for a few weeks,” Eitan told The Times of Israel newspaper. A powerful anesthetic, ketamine has also become a popular recreational drug in recent years for the sense of detachment it gives users.

“I’ve never seen anything like that,” in 20 years of treating trauma victims, said Eitan. “The physical, sexual, mental, psychological abuse of these hostages who came back is just terrible,” she added.

"We have to rewrite the textbook.”

The hospital has been treating 14 former hostages held by Hamas, some of whom also reported being drugged with what doctors believe were benzodiazepines and sedatives like Valium and Klonopin.

One patient told Eitan that she and others were held for more than four days in complete darkness. “They became psychotic, they had hallucinations,” Eitan said.

Some of the hostages have admitted having suicidal thoughts since their return, Eitan told the newspaper, while others experience dissociative states.  “One minute they know that they are here at Ichilov Medical Center, and the next they think they are back with Hamas," she said.

Eitan pointed to the staggering mental health toll of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and saw 240 Israelis and foreigners taken back to Gaza as hostages. She said about five percent of Israel’s population — some 400,000 people — are expected to suffer some symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder, and there are plans to create a national PTSD treatment center.

Tomer Zadik, 24, said his nightmares about the attack have been lessening over time with treatment at the Eitan’s hospital. He was shot in the arm when Hamas terrorists stormed the Nova music festival, slaughtering hundreds of people at the outdoor event.

“The atrocities over there, words really can’t describe,” he told the newspaper. “They wanted to break us, not only physically. They wanted to mentally break the whole nation of Israel,” he continued, referring to Hamas and the attackers. “But we won’t break.”

As the released hostages are being treated, concern is growing about the fate of those still being held in Gaza, now in their third month of captivity.

About 120 hostages are still thought to be alive in the besieged territory, some of whom are believed to be in the tunnel system that Israel is now flooding.

On Wednesday, hundreds of family members of the remaining hostages were protesting in Jerusalem, demanding that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu move quickly to secure a deal for their loved ones’ release.

The demonstrators stood along the road leading from Netanyahu's office to the Knesset, holding signs that read: "Time is running out – release the abductees now."