Sagui Dekel-Chen, a dual U.S. and Israeli citizen, is one of the three Israeli hostages Hamas released over the weekend after nearly 500 days of captivity.
As part of the fragile ceasefire deal that went into effect last month, Israel also released 369 Palestinian prisoners and detainees. It was the sixth hostage-for-prisoner exchange between Israel and the Palestinian militant group.
Sagui Dekel-Chen was kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023 from Nir Oz, a kibbutz in southern Israel close to the Gaza border. During the 15-month war, his family persistently advocated for a ceasefire deal. His father, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, a professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has repeatedly and publicly pushed for Hamas to release all its hostages. He has also criticized the Israeli government's handling of the war.
Last month, Jonathan Dekel-Chen joined Morning Edition and described his son's absence as "hellish" for him and his family, especially Sagui's three young daughters, one of which he had not met because she was born two months after he was kidnapped.
After Sagui Dekel-Chen's release, Jonathan Dekel-Chen spoke to NPR's Leila Fadel again. He described the emotional reunion with his son and discussed Sagui's physical and emotional state and well-being.
The following excerpt has been edited for clarity and length.
Leila Fadel: What was that first moment like, the moment you saw Sagui again for the first time in nearly 500 days?
Jonathan Dekel-Chen: Well, it was a feeling that I was a witness to a miracle, quite honestly. That was the sensation, before I was really close enough to him to really take it all in. And once I was, I knew that it was my son, that Sagui himself had come home. Sagui, he speaks with his eyes. And once I saw his eyes, I knew that somehow, somehow he had survived 500 days in hell. And he, my son, was back with us.
Fadel: How is he physically and emotionally?
Dekel-Chen: We knew in advance from the forensic evidence in their home that he had been wounded during the massacre, Hamas's massacre on Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7th. Those wounds now will need extensive treatment in order to rehabilitate him. And as you might imagine, 500 days of abuse, malnutrition, lack of healthcare and sanitation in a tunnel without seeing the light of day for all of that time has cast a heavy toll on Sagui's body. But it is all fixable, and that's what's most important.
He's in remarkably good spirits under the circumstances. We have no doubt that there will be some ups and downs over the next days, weeks, months, because, of course, 500 days is not knowing in any given second whether you're going to live or die at the hands of murderous terrorists, of course, has an effect on anyone.
Fadel: The last time we spoke, you told us one of Sagui's children was born while he was a hostage in Gaza, that he had never met his child. What was it like for him to finally meet that child and be reunited with his other children?
Dekel-Chen: I think there's something we need to know even before answering that question. It turns out that Sagui and almost all of the hostages held underground in the tunnels knew nothing of the outside world. So, from October 7th, 2023, Sagui had no idea if his wife and children, or any of us, had survived the massacre. He only learned two days before his release that his wife had survived and that at least his two little girls had also survived. Until he crossed the border into Israel, he was not really aware of the fact that any of them were alive or that his daughter had been born.
He was beyond joy. I don't think there are words in Hebrew or in English, or any other language, to really describe the emotions and feelings at this reunion, [in which Sagui is] really coming back from the valley of death, or the tunnels of death more exactly in this case. He has met all of his girls, or reunited with his two older daughters and met for the first time, Shahar, who is now a year and two months old. She was born about two months after the massacre.
It's spectacular. It gives one faith, I suppose, that there are greater forces in the world at work, but there's much more to be done. There's still 73 Israeli hostages being held by Hamas in those same hellish tunnels. So we have much more work to do to bring everyone home.
Olivia Hampton edited the digital and audio versions of this piece.
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