In Hamas captivity, an Israeli mother found the strength to survive in her 2 young daughters

An Israeli mother who was held in Hamas captivity for 49 days has described in an interview the trials of caring for two young children as a hostage

TEL AVIV, Israel -- Tantrums, tears, temperature, toilet accidents. These travails of childhood are familiar to any parent. But for Doron Katz Asher, the daily whims of children took on a new, frightening dimension while in Hamas captivity with her two young daughters.

If the girls cried, militants would bang on the door of the room where she was being held. When they were hungry, she didn’t always have anything to feed them. She slept with one eye open, always keeping watch over her daughters.

“(I felt) Fear. Fear that maybe because my daughters are crying and are making some noise they’ll get some directive from above to take them, to do something to them,” Katz Asher told Israel Channel 12 TV in a lengthy interview broadcast Saturday night. “Constant fear.”

Her account builds on a growing number of freed captives who are sharing their harrowing stories of weeks in captivity even as roughly 129 hostages remain.

Katz Asher, 34, and her daughters Raz, 4, and Aviv, 2, were visiting family in Kibbutz Nir Oz when Hamas attacked the sleepy farming community on Oct. 7. Katz Asher, her daughters and her mother were put on a tractor and driven to Gaza. An exchange of fire erupted between the militants who snatched them and Israeli forces, killing her mother and leaving her and Aviv lightly wounded, she said in the interview. They were part of some 240 people taken captive that day whose plight has stunned and gripped Israelis.