Keith and Aviva Siegel have seen the horrors of war up close and personal — torn from their home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza and taken hostage deep into Gaza, where Aviva would spend nearly two months and Keith would be held for more than a year. 

And yet, little could have prepared them for what they would encounter at the Kakuma refugee camp in Kenya, where they spent five days last month volunteering at one of the world’s largest refugee settlements with the Israeli humanitarian group IsraAid as part of the couple’s pivot to humanitarian efforts around the world.

Aviva, who was a school teacher before the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, choked up as she recalled the pregnant teenagers she met in the camp, where hundreds of thousands of people have fled from places such as South Sudan, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. 

One of the teens she met, a 15-year-old girl, had just given birth to her second child. She had her oldest child at age 13. “It was too much for me to carry,” Aviva told Jewish Insider from New York. “It was too much for me to carry because of so many things. You know, these girls, some of them have been raped, and there’s nobody in the world that’s protecting them, nobody.”

It was a familiar feeling for the couple, who have each recounted having seen fellow hostages after they had been sexually assaulted by their Hamas captors.

The people she met at the refugee camp, Aviva said, were “screaming out with no voice to tell how bad the situation is there. It took me to Gaza, to those moments, and so many moments and so many days of not knowing if I’ll ever live, if I’ll make it, if I’m visible, if anybody is doing anything they could to take me out of there.”

“I didn’t understand in Gaza how the world let us stay there for so long,” she said. 

The couple’s time in captivity — and after, as they became prominent activists lobbying for the release of the remaining hostages in Gaza — deepened their resolve to use their newfound prominence for good. From Kenya, the Siegels flew to Washington, where they met last week with First Lady Melania Trump. 

“We were at the White House, and I told the first lady about our experience in Kakuma at the refugee camp, and the hardships and the horrific life they have there,” Keith said. “I kind of feel like I carry them with me, in my heart and my soul and my thoughts, and just to be able to be their voice here in the U.S.” 

The couple exchanged experiences both with refugees in the camp and IsraAid staffers — many of whom are refugees themselves.

“I really felt like it was like a mutual understanding,” Keith said. “And also feeling like all of us, them and Aviva and I, have experienced suffering. All of us have experienced being hungry because we didn’t have food to eat, being thirsty because we didn’t have water to drink. Just the uncertainty, the lack of security and feeling like death could be imminent.”

Both Keith and Aviva said they were shaped by their early childhood experiences. Coming from apartheid South Africa, Aviva, whose family moved to Israel when she was 9, said that as a child, “I saw things that shouldn’t be in this world.” 

Being at the refugee camp, she explained, “brought me back to those days of being a kid in a place that is just a disaster. It’s a disaster.”

Growing up in the U.S., Keith said, “my parents raised me, and they showed me, by their example, tikkun olam. It’s one of the important concepts about values of the Jewish faith.”

“I’m sure my late parents would be very, very proud of me,” he added. “I feel like I’m continuing their legacy of things that were so important to them their whole lives. They were helping people in many, many different ways. Within their community, but also outside of their community and around the world.”

The Siegels were connected to IsraAid through Matan Sivek, a co-founder of the D.C. Hostages and Missing Families Forum and, with his wife, a leader of the group’s U.S. efforts. Sivek, who lives in Washington, joined IsraAid as the group’s head of strategic partnerships last year. 

The pairing between the Siegels and IsraAid was, as CEO Yotam Polizer told JI, “a spiritual match.”

“It’s an unbelievable privilege to have Aviva and Keith, because they are really bringing voice to the voiceless,” Polizer said. “They are, for me and for us, the best example of post-traumatic growth, which I believe is the essence of Israel — how these terrible, terrible tragedies could also turn into opportunities to support others and to build bridges.”

IsraAid has operated in the camp for more than a decade, and employs approximately 50 people there. Among the services it provides are health clinics, clean water access and schooling for some of the tens of thousands of children in the camp. 

“Keith and I aren’t special in any way,” Aviva said. “We are just two people that were kidnapped from Kfar Aza and spent time in the world’s darkness, Keith for 484 days, and me for 51 days. And we know what it’s like to need help. So we need to help them. We just need to help them.”

Keith became emotional as he talked about the organization’s work across the globe. “I know there are many, many other people all around the world that are in big trouble, and I feel like it’s my responsibility as much as I can to search to be aware of people that are in trouble, and do whatever I can do to help them.”

For him, the pivot to the humanitarian field also served a deeper purpose. “Helping others,” he said, “is part of my healing.”

As Israeli twins Ziv and Gali Berman mark their 28th birthday in captivity on Wednesday — their second since being kidnapped to Gaza from Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Hamas-led terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 — their close-knit group of friends is quietly commemorating the day while continuing their public campaign for the brothers’ release.

Known to their loved ones as inseparable, Ziv and Gali are not only the best of friends but also deeply connected to — and the center of — their childhood circle in Kfar Aza. Ziv, the more quiet and reserved twin, and also the funny one, and Gali, the loud, extroverted and charming one, complement one another and gravitate toward each other, friends say. But testimonies from released hostages suggest that the two have been separated from each other while in captivity.

Their birthday, said Inbar Rosenfeld, a lifelong friend of the twins, “makes us stop for a moment and remember, and get a sense of the time that they haven’t been here — and this is the second birthday [in captivity.]”

“It’s crazy, it’s tough — we never thought we would get to this situation,” Rosenfeld told Jewish Insider on Tuesday.

At the request of the Berman family, their friends have chosen to forgo large public events to mark the occasion this year. Instead, they are flooding social media with messages and appearing in traditional media to amplify the call for the twins’ release. The hope is that, somehow, those efforts will reach Gali and Ziv. “To show they are still with us and we are doing everything for them,” said Rosenfeld. Former hostages have shared that media coverage and visible solidarity gave them strength during captivity.

“We hope they are keeping up their spirits and are still optimistic, and we hope that we are managing to convey to them good energy from what we are doing from afar,” Rosenfeld said.

Nineteen residents of Kfar Aza were kidnapped on Oct. 7. Twelve of them were released in the first hostage deal in November 2023, after which members of the kibbutz launched an ongoing campaign for the return of the remaining seven. Emily Damari — whose house Gali rushed to on Oct. 7 so she wouldn’t be alone — Doron Steinbrecher and Keith Siegel were released in a ceasefire deal at the beginning of the year. Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz were mistakenly killed by Israeli fire in December 2023. The Berman twins are the last two residents of the kibbutz still held in Gaza.

A message shared by the Berman family on Wednesday said,  “Our beloved Gali and Ziv, how we feared this day would come—a second birthday in hell. You are 28 years old today, though we’re not sure you even know it. We watch videos from past birthdays, from the normal world, and our hearts break. You were surrounded by your closest friends, celebrating in your vibrant neighborhood, drawing everyone to you like magnets. Eating, drinking, being carefree. You have lost your freedom and control over your own lives.”

“We imagine that you have been reunited, that you are embracing each other, encouraging and strengthening one another. We know you don’t understand how you can still be there, or when you will be free again,” it continued. “We promise you this will happen – you will return to the safe embrace of your mother. Hold on just a little longer, survive, and dream of a happy ending. We are calling out: Enough! End this endless war that exacts such a heavy price in hostages and soldiers.”

The  campaign for the hostages from Kfar Aza has included printing T-shirts with the hostages’ names, the distribution of magnets, hats, pins, bracelets and bags, and various events, including a beach footvolley tournament and a second-hand clothing sale organized with celebrities. Rosenfeld, a fitness trainer, has also held special workout sessions dedicated to the hostages.

“There is one goal, to spread and reach each and every person so that they get to know Gali and Zivi,” Rosenfeld explained. “Not just by name and not just by the title of ‘the hostages.’ But so that they really get to know and connect with them.”

Ido Felus, another close friend of the twins from Kfar Aza, said that their second birthday in captivity fills him with a mix of pain and perseverance. “I am sure they are coming back, I have no doubt of that,” Felus told JI.

“Both of them have the best hearts I know,” Felus told JI. “They both love life. They’re different but also very similar. They’re very sociable people, they have so many friends — you could talk to any one and they would tell you about their strong relationship with them because this is the kind of people they are.”

“I can’t believe this is their second birthday in captivity but it gives me more drive to continue to fight so that they can be here.” Felus noted, “We go through so much every day … and they are still stuck in Oct. 7, still in that sense of fear, chaos, probably very hungry.”

Both Felus and Rosenfeld said they try not to get caught up in media reports about hostage negotiations, instead choosing to stay focused on their grassroots advocacy.

“I’ve learned that until they’re here I won’t be calm, so of course I see the reports, but I will believe it when I see the picture of true victory — of both of them hugging their mother, Talia,” Felus said. 

“And until then I will continue full force — we won’t normalize it [their captivity].”

Felus also underscored the importance of support from Jews around the world: “We know we can’t do anything without you … you really give us so much strength until we see Gali and Zivi here at home.”

“And if this somehow reaches Gali and Zivi,” he added, “You know that I love you and we’ll do everything to bring you home.”