Does footage of former Hamas hostage Mia Schem, who said she was treated well, contradicts mainstream media reports that Hamas treats Israeli hostages poorly? No, that's not true: There are numerous accounts from relatives of released hostages, or the hostages themselves, describing the horrible conditions in which they were kept and the devastating effect this had on them physically and mentally.
The claim appeared in a video (archived here) on TikTok on December 1, 2023. It showed a screenshot of an iDnes.cz article headline that read (translated from Czech to English by Lead Stories staff): "Almost all the prisoners returned malnourished. Hamas prisoners experienced their own Dachau."
The second part of the video shows footage of a French-Israeli hostage, Mia Schem, saying that she was treated well by her captors, who were "good to her." Comments on the video on TikTok (translated from Czech or Slovak to English by Lead Stories staff) read:
While Hamas releases smiling people, Israel releases children with broken arms, women doused with acid and all fingers cut off.
Terrible, how media lie.
They do not even try to find out the truth before writing something.
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Mon Dec 4 08:10:16 2023 UTC)
The article in the first part of the TikTok was published by the iDnes.cz website on November 28, 2023. There are several accounts from Israeli hostages released by Hamas, or from their relatives, that describe the horrific conditions in which they were kept in Gaza, resulting in physical or psychological trauma. While Israel rushed most of the hostages released during a six-day truce out of media sight to a hospital for medical and psychological care, details of the conditions of their captivity have emerged from their relatives' accounts.
One of the freed hostages, Ruti Munder, whose son was killed in a Hamas attack, gave an interview to Israeli Channel 13 Television. She described how she slept on plastic chairs with a sheet, while some boys slept on the floor, and how the food supply for hostages, which was initially good, began to dwindle until people became hungry, the Associated Press wrote.
The father of Emily Hand, who turned 9 while in captivity, spoke to CNN on the effects that the captivity had on his daughter, saying that, when he first met her after she was released, the girl could only whisper, as she had been conditioned not to make any noise. Other hostages told their relatives they had been threatened with being killed and that they could not see daylight at all, or were beaten by civilians upon their arrival to Gaza, where they were forced to watch videos with footage of Hamas violence, Reuters reported.
While most of the released hostages appeared to be in good medical condition after being held for almost two months, at least two of them needed serious medical care, the AP wrote on November 26, 2023. According to Ynetnews, which cited the Israeli Health Ministry, some hostages lost as much as 15 kilograms (33 pounds) during their captivity.
Some videos of prisoners being released, made and released by Hamas itself, appeared online, including the video of Mia Schem used in the TikTok post above. According to Ynetnews, she was forced to praise Hamas for treating her kindly in the propaganda video. Other Hamas videos of hostages being released also contained unedited audio from a captor who ordered hostages to keep waving, proving these videos were filmed under duress to show that Hamas allegedly treated hostages humanely, the Times of Israel reported.
