In his first interview since being freed, former hostage Yosef-Haim Ohana offered a chilling, firsthand account of his 738 days in Hamas captivity � a nightmare of arbitrary beatings, psychological torment, and near-execution.

Ohana, abducted from the Supernova music festival on October 7, 2023, described moments when his life hung by a thread. �Suddenly an irritated man enters the room, pulls out his handgun, holds it against my head, [and asks], �Tell me how many people have you killed. Now I will kill you,�� he recalled. �Then some sheikh came, grabbed his arm and pulled, and told him, �Not now.��

He recounted brutal and methodical assaults, sometimes spontaneous, other times �organized,� as captors justified their violence as revenge for Israeli military actions.

�They let us choose between us, who to kill, who to just hurt. They ran a lottery for us,� he said.

Ohana vividly described the terror of confinement in a pitch-black tunnel, illuminated only by a dim LED light. �When someone came with a lamp, at first we thought maybe they�d bring us tea. One time they came and started beating us. Since then, we called it �the lamps are coming.� Every time we saw lamps, we had panic attacks,� he said.

He survived, he said, by appealing to his captors� self-interest: �I told them, �If I�m dead, fewer prisoners will be released. Keep me alive for your cause.��

Ohana was one of 20 living hostages freed earlier this month as part of phase one of U.S. President Donald Trump�s Gaza peace plan. The remains of 13 others are still held in Gaza.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)