Keith Siegel, who grew up in Chapel Hill before emigrating to Israel, spent 484 days in Hamas captivity after militants dragged him and his wife, Aviva, from their home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Oct. 7, 2023. He was moved 33 times through underground tunnels and houses in Gaza during that ordeal, spending 433 of those days separated from Aviva, who was released earlier during a 2023 truce. Three years after the attack, the couple is rebuilding their lives in northern Israel, still carrying the physical and emotional weight of what they survived.
The violence began the moment militants entered their home. According to Friends of the IDF, Hamas fighters broke Keith's ribs and shot him while pulling Aviva by her hair and damaging her knee, before forcing the couple into Keith's own car to drive them into Gaza. The attack on Kibbutz Kfar Aza killed 64 of its residents, destroying much of the communal farming village where the Siegels had lived for decades and raised four children and five grandchildren, per the same account. As WRAL reports, Hamas militants killed roughly 1,200 people across Israel that day, kidnapping the Siegels along with dozens of others.
Starvation, Isolation, and a Dug Grave
Inside Gaza, conditions for Keith were brutal. WRAL reports that he lacked information, sanitation, food and water throughout his captivity, and that militants at one point made him dig his own grave. Keith told the outlet he survived 484 days of torture, a figure that aligns with the 433 days he spent separated from Aviva after she was freed in November 2023 during a humanitarian ceasefire.
By August 2026, Keith had described how conditions worsened sharply after that initial truce collapsed on Dec. 1, 2023. Guards became visibly more violent and cut off basic food and water, he said in comments reported by Israel Hayom. Aviva, for her part, had already testified before U.S. lawmakers at the Capitol in April 2024, recounting severe starvation, oxygen deprivation in underground tunnels, and witnessing sexual abuse against female captives as she pushed for her husband's release, according to the office of Rep. Don Davis.
A Mother's Death Kept Secret
While Keith remained underground, his family in North Carolina was grieving without him. His mother, Gladys Siegel, a prominent Chapel Hill and Durham community leader who served as the first female president of Durham's Beth El Synagogue, died at age 97 in December 2024, the Texas Jewish Post reported. Her family shielded her from the news of her son's captivity because of her dementia, meaning she died without ever knowing he had been taken hostage.
Gladys Siegel's civic legacy ran deep in the Triangle. In 2020, then-Gov. Roy Cooper awarded her the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, North Carolina's highest civilian honor, for decades of volunteer work across Orange and Durham counties, according to WTVD. She had devoted herself to organizations including Meals on Wheels and local Jewish groups, work that made her death during her son's captivity all the more painful for those who knew the family.
Freedom and a Fragile Recovery
Keith was finally freed on Feb. 1, 2025 under a ceasefire agreement, becoming the first American citizen released in that wave of exchanges, alongside hostages Yarden Bibas and Ofer Kalderon, U.S. and Israeli officials noted at the time, as reported by WCNC. Aviva has said she only recently began to feel free herself, even though her own release came more than a year earlier, per WRAL's reporting. She has since documented their ordeal in detail, writing a book titled “Survived to Tell,” and has said that sharing their truth is itself a victory.
Keith told WRAL he is grateful to be alive and reunited with his family, but he also feels sorrow for those who did not survive and for others who were left physically or emotionally injured. He has advocated for leaders to prioritize stabilization and peace, and both he and Aviva say they continue to experience pain and trauma even as they hope for peace in Israel and around the world.
Rebuilding Near the Grandchildren
By October 2026, Keith and Aviva had relocated to Kibbutz Gazit in Israel's Lower Galilee region, rebuilding their lives near their grandchildren after their original home at Kibbutz Kfar Aza was left in ruins, according to The Times of Israel. Keith has said the support the couple received from people in the Triangle gave him a sense of optimism, a connection that stretches back to his upbringing in Chapel Hill as the son of a woman who spent her life serving that same community.
