Twenty-one months have passed since Liri Albag was released from Hamas captivity, and her family still chooses its words carefully around her, "walking on eggshells," as her mother Shira puts it.
"It will take a little more time. Everything is still very sensitive," Shira says. "We’re more careful, we give in more and we try to be more understanding. She’s been through enough, and you never know what the trigger will be that causes an outburst or emotional flooding."
Liri: "I feel like I’m on a speeding roller coaster, sometimes up and sometimes down. For the first six months there was euphoria, but over time things began to sink in and the realization of everything I went through hit me."
Shira: "Of course she has difficult days. In the end, she was in captivity. There are lows, there are outbursts. What she’s going through isn’t simple. What she saw on Oct. 7 was trauma that went untreated throughout her entire captivity."
Liri: "They didn’t let us hug, cry or talk to one another. They took even that comfort away from us. At some point we stopped showing emotion or affection. We became apathetic to what was happening."
What helps you cope with the trauma?
Liri: "I’m in therapy, of course, and we also have one another. I know that if I call Emily Damari, Romi Gonen, Agam Berger or Naama Levy, they will always be there for me, and they are the only ones who really understand me. I also have my family and my mother, who is with me day and night."
Have you managed to argue since your release?
Shira: "Not argue, but I’ve gotten angry with her a few times, mainly because she is constantly on the move and never really present. In my opinion, it’s too much running around. She needs to stop for a moment and breathe. A lot of times I told her, ‘Liri, you’re going to collapse eventually,’ because she barely slept and jumped from one thing to another. She came back with a fierce desire to devour life."
Liri: "Before, I would speak to Mom on the phone once a day. Today I talk to her morning, noon and night. The experience of captivity made me look at life differently. I grew up all at once. I’m only 21, but I feel 25."
(Photo: Adi Orni)
Good thing you didn’t say you feel like an old woman of 25.
She laughs. "Because at 25 you’re already supposed to make decisions about your future and about making your dreams happen. That’s not something kids my age usually deal with, but I do. I’m already thinking about what I want to be when I grow up."
‘They shot at us, I wasn’t hit’
Liri was born in the community of Matan near Kfar Saba, the third of four children of Shira, 59, and Eli, 60, and sister to Roni, 28, Shai, 25, and Guy, 17. Her parents run a family business importing hardware products for the furniture industry and now live in Moshav Yarhiv, next to Matan.
She enlisted in the IDF in July 2023 and, after completing a course for surveillance soldiers, was sent together with her friends from the course, Naama Levy and Agam Berger, to the Nahal Oz military base. They arrived there on Thursday, Oct. 5, two days before they were abducted.
Much has already been written and said about her abduction. Hamas terrorists who overran the base killed 54 male and female soldiers and abducted Liri along with six other surveillance soldiers: Naama Levy, Agam Berger, Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Noa Marciano, who was killed in Gaza, and Ori Megidish, who was rescued by the IDF.
On the 277th day of their captivity, footage was released showing them at the moment of their abduction, sitting battered and injured on the floor. During her 477 days in captivity, Liri was moved between 22 hiding places. She spent 103 of those days in underground tunnels. Like the other hostages, she was held in harsh conditions, with almost no food or water.
Liri Albag with her parents, Shira and Eli, on the day she was released from Hamas captivity
(Photo: GPO)
Liri, were there moments when you genuinely feared for your life?
"Of course. There were quite a few moments like that. The fact that you’re living with armed terrorists, you don’t know when they’re going to explode over something and take it out on you. There was one terrorist I didn’t trust, completely crazy, bipolar, five minutes one way and five minutes the opposite. The only thing that kept us going was knowing they had no interest in us dying, because they would get much more for us if we stayed alive."
Did you know what was happening in Israel while you were there?
"Yes. We asked for a radio and they gave us one, so we were updated. Every now and then I would catch a glimpse of their television on the way to the bathroom, and once I even saw Mom and Dad at Hostages Square."
‘I’m not a celebrity’
Although she spent almost her entire period of military service in captivity, three months after returning home Liri chose to re-enlist and serve in a classified position. In May, she completed her service and posted a photograph on Instagram of herself cutting up her military ID card.
"I felt that I needed to close the circle, to say thank you to the IDF and, above all, to feel like a normal girl again."
Liri met her boyfriend, 26-year-old Tom Skolovin, a fitness trainer who runs a private soccer school at Kibbutz Ein Dor, on Instagram two and a half months after her release. It took six months before she felt comfortable introducing him publicly, in a romantic Instagram video from a day they spent together.
"He says I made the first move, but really he started with me," she says, laughing. "He followed me on Instagram and replied to my story. Then I started a conversation."
What did you write to him?
"I asked him, ‘Who are you and why did you follow me?’ And he wrote, ‘You intrigued me.’ I told him, ‘Well, you intrigued me too. Otherwise I wouldn’t have replied.’ The rest is history. There’s a lot of love between us."
Shira: "Tom is good for her. He boosted her confidence. Here is someone who looks at her not only as Liri Albag the hostage."
How is captivity present in your relationship?
"It’s present in my life, so obviously it’s present in my relationship too. The advantage is that he didn’t know me before. This is the Liri he knows, so he doesn’t compare who I was then with who I am today."
Do you feel that he also walks on eggshells around you, like the rest of the family?
"No, but he’s a sensitive person. We communicate, we talk about everything. He knows what I went through, and he knows how to notice when I’m irritable or when I need more quiet."
Are you thinking about moving in together?
"Obviously it will happen soon."
Shira: "No, wait, not so fast. I’m not letting you go. You’re still a little girl. There’s time," she says, laughing.
Liri: "There’s a distance between Yarhiv and Ein Dor. For now we drive back and forth, but it’s difficult."
You’ve become a sought-after figure at openings and launch events. How do you feel about being a celebrity?
"I’m not a celebrity. I only went to one launch event with my mother. It was cool, but after that I went back to the army and that was it. I may have 80,000 followers, but I don’t work at it. I don’t run a page, I don’t make money from it and I don’t do collaborations. Before captivity, I always joked that one day I’d be famous. I told Agam about it in captivity. I said, ‘See? I knew it,’" she says, laughing. "I don’t want all that celebrity stuff anymore, because at the end of the day I’m a private person."
Is there anything Liri avoids today because of captivity?
Shira: "She can’t watch anything on television except cartoons. Then she asks me or her sisters to sit beside her on the couch, takes my hand and asks us to stroke her and pamper her. Well, she has a pretty good excuse."
Liri: "I tell them, ‘I was in captivity, spoil me,’" she says, laughing.
(Photo: Adi Orni)
Shira: "Her relationship with her sisters has become much stronger, and so has her relationship with her brother Guy. They’ve already been through the worst thing imaginable, so everyone is more open about sharing problems and looking after one another. As a mother, it’s wonderful for me to see."
You could see that at the wedding of your eldest daughter Roni a month ago. The video of the two of them dancing together went viral and received more than a million views.
Liri: "First of all, that song, ‘Ma Yihye Machar’ by Pe’er Tasi, accompanied Roni throughout my captivity, especially the line, ‘I will find you among millions of people.’ We were dancing and then suddenly the song came on. She came over to sing it to me, and I couldn’t stop the tears. It was an unbelievable closing of the circle that at her wedding we were dancing together to that song, especially after her husband waited to propose until I came back. I remember that when I returned from Gaza, I hugged him and whispered in his ear, ‘You haven’t proposed yet, I hope.’ He answered, ‘Do you really think I would have done that without you?’"
Shira: "That wedding was our family’s victory party. There were captivity survivors and parents of captivity survivors, people from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum and, of course, the surveillance soldiers who were abducted with Liri."
Are you in touch with other parents?
"We have several parents’ groups, and there isn’t a day when there aren’t conversations there. We meet from time to time too. Not long ago we were at the wedding of Karina Ariev’s sister and everyone came. Now we’re celebrating happy occasions."
Liri: "Knock on wood, let it stay that way. Only happy occasions, amen."
Did Roni’s wedding make you want to get married too?
"I’m not at that age yet, but it’s no secret that I’ve always dreamed of being a mother. After captivity, that desire only became stronger. That’s also the sweetest revenge there can be. At the end of the day, I came into this world to continue it, and I will continue the family line despite them, with at least five children."