71-Year-Old Israeli Grandfather Recounts His Horrific Experience as a Captive of Hamas “Every day increases fear, danger, and suffering.” by Hugh Fitzgerald
Luis Har is a 71-year-old Israeli grandfather who was taken from his home at Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak on October 7, 2023 by Hamas terrorists. He was finally freed from captivity in the Gazan city of Rafah in “a daring military operation” carried out by the IDF in February 2024. More on his story, which he recently told to the newspaper Maariv, can be found here: “Most Hamas terrorists were drugged, completely inhumane, rescued hostage says,” by Sherry Makover-Balikov, Jerusalem Post, January 28, 2025:
“The hostages today are suffering from prolonged hunger,” released hostage Luis Har said in an interview with Maariv.”Hamas takes all the aid,” he continued. “I was there; I know what delaying the deals means. Every day increases fear, danger, and suffering. We must not wait, and we must not delay because every passing day increases the concern that, in the end, there will be no one left to bring back.”Har, who was abducted on October 7 from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak, was later freed in a daring military operation in Rafah in February 2024. In his interview, he described the terrifying moments of his abduction, his prolonged captivity in the home of a Hamas operative in southern Gaza, and his eventual rescue and return to Israel….
Har said the captors’ treatment of the hostages varied. “There were some moments of humanity, but not the majority. Most of them were either drugged or completely inhumane.”
“The man of the house, for example, took care of us and made it a point to reassure us that we would be okay. He said, ‘If there’s peace between us, I’ll come to your kibbutz to eat pizza at your place.’ That doesn’t negate the brutality of him and the others, who constantly threatened and shouted. They thought our situation would end in two or three days, but suddenly it became long-term.”
Humor became a lifeline for Har and his fellow captives.
“At some point, we started laughing whenever they said, ‘shwaya shwaya’ (slowly, slowly). I’d say to the man of the house, ‘Come on, shwaya shwaya, we’ve already been here for weeks.’ Humor saved us.”
Har described the challenges of dwindling resources. “I cooked. At first, it was easy; there was everything—canned goods, vegetables, cheese—and they brought pitas every day. But over time, the food ran out. Eventually, Fernando [Merman] and I were sharing one pita a day, dividing it into pieces so we wouldn’t finish it all at once.”
His narrative tells of kidnapped Israelis existing in a miasma of fear: initial fear at the way they were dragged along the ground — “they treated us like rags” — to a waiting Toyota. While in that car, as it neared Khan Yunis, Har saw crowds of menacing teenagers thronging the vehicle; they were carrying large shears and came close to the car, “making threatening gestures as if they were about to cut us to pieces. The terrorists kept shooting in the air and sped through the crowd to prevent them from lynching us.” The Hamas terrorists wanted to keep the terrified hostages alive, not out of compassion, for they had already killed in a joyous mood many kibbutzim, but in order to have them available for the purposes of a future swap for imprisoned Palestinians. In captivity, every opening of their cell door filled them with dread, and they would think to themselves that “this is it. We’ve reached the final stop.”
At the beginning, Har described the food as adequate, but the amount they received steadily diminished, and before he was rescued, Luis Har was being given each day only a single piece of pita, which he had to share with another hostage.
The constant terror, the threats of being killed from both a mob of teenagers wielding shears and from their Hamas captors, the malnourishment (each day, only one-half of a single pita), the thin mattresses on a frozen floor that they were forced to sleep on, the freezing weather that they had to endure while wearing clothes fit for a summer outing — all this is what Luis Har experienced. But he was one of the lucky ones. He was rescued in February, after only four months of captivity. The hostages now in Hamas’ grip have been held captive for sixteen months, often in darkened tunnels for months at a time. Imagine living in a dark tunnel, half-starved and crazed with fear, fear of rape, of beatings, fear of being murdered, for sixteen months.
There is one part of Luis Har’s story that deserves special attention. He says that during the attack by Hamas operatives on October 7, they were accompanied by civilians: “There were many women and teenagers looting houses, running in all directions, and trying to enter homes along with the terrorists.” This should remind the world that many of those who are described as the “innocent civilians of Gaza” were in fact not innocent at all. Many hundreds of them eagerly entered the kibbutzim alongside the 6,000 Hamas operatives. Some went along for the fun of seeing Israelis raped, tortured, mutilated, and murdered — perhaps some were even allowed by Hamas to join in. Others just wanted to loot the houses of the Israelis and joined Hamas members in “trying to enter homes along with terrorists.” They wanted loot left by the dead, and the dying. These were not “innocent civilians.” And hundreds of thousands of people in Gaza who support Hamas still, despite or rather because of the October 7 atrocities, cannot be described as “innocent civilians.” They are no more innocent than the Germans who knew perfectly well what was going on in the death camps, where the railroad cars emptied their ghastly cargo day after day, and human smoke rose from the crematoria.
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