Yosef Chaim Ohana, who was released from Hamas captivity two weeks ago, recounted for the first time on Monday, in an interview with Channel 12, the toughest moments in captivity and the way he convinced the terrorists to keep him alive.
"In the first place where I was kept, suddenly someone came into the room, angry, cocked his pistol, and put it to my head. 'Tell me how many people you have killed, now I will kill you.' I reply: 'Zero, zero.' Then he says, 'Eh, you're also lying to me,' and was about to shoot me. At that point, some shiekh walks in, pulls him by the hand, and tells him, 'Not now,'" Ohana recounted.
He added, "There were times that it was planned; they wanted to make us anxious. They sat us down and told us: 'Your country did so and so, now we are taking revenge.' They made us choose between each other, who to kill, who to just wound, they drew lots on us."
He shared the fear of the terrorists' abuse. "Once, they came, we said hello, and they suddenly began beating us. They were ordered to begin hitting us. They faced us against a wall, took off our shirts, and beat us. Since then, we would call it 'the flashlights are coming.' Every time we saw flashlights, we would have a panic attack. No one knew what to do; 'Should I stand?' 'Should I sit?' 'Who will be the first to get it?' We wanted to run as far in as possible, but then we understood that it won't look good and that we need to spread out across the room. We preferred that they wouldn't come for a week, two weeks, a month; that they would leave us alone."
Ohana said that when it was necessary to convince the terrorists that it was not worth killing him, he tried to speak to their common sense. "At that point, I knew them, and I knew what was important to them, why they abducted me, and that the very fact that I was a hostage made me an 'important bargaining chip.' I told them, 'What, now you'll take revenge on me so that your citizens will be happy, but what about the prisoners waiting to be released in return for me from prison, to leave and see their families? If I die, they'll release fewer prisoners."