‘An eye for an eye’: Hamas wrote message to Ben Gvir on hostage Maxim Herkin’s back

Former hostage Maxim Herkin recounted in an interview broadcast Thursday that his Hamas captors severely beat him and then wrote the words, “a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye” on his back as a message to far-right National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, who received a photo.

The young father, 35, who hid the fact that he was an IDF reserve officer from his captors, was the latest freed hostage to report being tortured as a result of Ben Gvir’s highly publicized campaign to worsen the conditions of Palestinian inmates. He also detailed the circumstances of his capture, when his two friends were killed at his side, and the brutal interrogations to which he was subjected in captivity.

“I was beaten up at least four or five times” due to Ben Gvir, Herkin told Channel 12 investigative reporting program Uvda in the interview.  During the beatings, Herkin said, he and other hostages were made to sit on their knees with their faces to a cement wall.

“I would just close my head, you know, and pray,” said Herkin, miming shielding his head with his hands. “The first time you’re put up against the wall like that, your first thought is that they were going to shoot us full of holes.”

His captors, Herkin recalled, said, in Arabic, “Ashan Ben Gvir.”

“As in, because of Ben Gvir. Everything is because of Ben Gvir,” said Herkin. “This is what Ben Gvir does, this is what we’ll do. And they took revenge on us.”

“They inscribed on my back, ‘a tooth for a tooth, an eye for an eye,’ and I know they transferred that picture to [Israel],” he said.

“It was sending regards to a certain person, and he received it,” said Herkin, referring to Ben Gvir.

“I’m not a political person, but my understanding is, you’re a minister, you’re a representative of the government, you’re supposed to watch your mouth,” Herkin said.

In the future, elect people who are in favor of their nation and not against it

“But the important thing is to learn the lesson, as they say,” said Herkin, flashing a smile and giving a thumbs-up. “And in the future, to elect people who are in favor of their nation and not against it.”

Responding to Herkin’s comments — which came days after freed hostage Bar Kuperstein gave a similar account — Ben Gvir repeated his allegation that the reports were “part of a campaign in the service of Hamas that is intended to improve prison conditions for the terrorists.”

In fact, hostages were tortured following the assassination of terrorists and destruction of terrorists’ homes, said Ben Gvir, without offering evidence to support his claim.

The “conception that if we just don’t upset Hamas, everything will be fine” brought about the terror group’s onslaught of October 7, 2023, which sparked the war in Gaza, said the minister, who has consistently opposed truce-hostage deals with Hamas.

During the interview with Herkin, Channel 12 also played a radio interview of Ben Gvir from May — some six weeks after the collapse of the previous deal — touting the then-renewed ground operation in Gaza as the surest way to bring back the hostages.

Appearing to refer to those comments, Herkin said: “Forget us, what are you doing to our families?… The little candle in their heart, you’re just putting it out. Saying, ‘I don’t care about you.’ It tears your heart out.”

“Where is your heart as a human being? You realize we’re not here because of some mistake we supposedly made,” he said. “That day [when Hamas invaded] was one giant mistake of the government. Instead of saying sorry and getting us out, you’re driving us to a totally different place.”

‘I did the right thing’

During the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led onslaught, Herkin was abducted while fleeing the massacre at the Reim-area Nova music festival, the first rave he ever attended. He attended with his friends Matías and Einav Burstein, who were murdered while trying to escape.

The three of them rushed to their cars and started driving away, but quickly discovered that the road was blocked by terrorists. Herkin got out of his car and joined the crowd escaping to the adjacent fields when he received a distress call from Matías, who had served as an infantry soldier in the 2006 Lebanon war and was suffering a post-traumatic reaction.

In a split-second decision, Herkin said, he backtracked to the Bursteins as the terrorists, who were firing in waves, closed in. While sheltering with the couple, Herkin said, he wrote to his mother that he loves her, then tossed away his phone and IDF officer’s certificate.

“If they find that on me — death,” he said.

Matías, who was armed, managed to take out one terrorist before being fatally shot in the back. Einav was also killed, and one bullet whizzed past Herkin’s left ear, narrowly missing him, he said.

“They were enjoying what they were doing,” said Herkin of the terrorists. They smirked as victims cowered in fear, then shot the victims dead, he said.

“No one was in a rush or anything,” he said. “The screams, the tears, everything — that was their fun.”

Despite being abducted, Herkin said he did not regret his fateful decision to try and save his friends. “If I had just gone on and said to them, for example, ‘Follow me, I’m here’… I wouldn’t have been able to live with that,” he said. “Even after the captivity and everything, I think — I’m sure — I did the right thing.”

In footage from the abduction, Herkin could be seen lying on the road with his face to the ground, bleeding and bound by the hands as terrorists surrounded and kicked him.

Herkin was blindfolded, then taken to an apartment inside Gaza where his hands and legs were shackled and he was denied food for several days, Channel 12 said.

He was held in six other locations, above and below ground, before his release this month, according to the network.

Throughout that time, he was subjected to “about four interrogations” by his captors, who would beat him intensely, and threatened to cut off his fingers with “a massive butcher’s knife” if he misled them, said Herkin.

Propaganda videos ‘all fabricated’

In a top-floor apartment in central Gaza’s Nuseirat, Herkin said, he and two other hostages, Segev Kalfon and Yosef Haim Ohana, were narrowly missed during intense IDF bombing that accompanied the June 8, 2024, rescue of four hostages from the refugee camp.

“Hell opened on us,” said Herkin. “It was a miracle we weren’t hit.”

Afterwards, Herkin, Ohana and Kalfon were taken to an underground tunnel where they were held together with Ohad Ben Ami, the oldest of the group, who was released in February as part of the last hostage deal, and Elkana Bohbot and Bar Kuperstein, who were released on October 13 alongside Herkin, Kalfon and Ohana.

The hostages were fed about 350 calories a day, Herkin estimated, adding that Ben Ami’s skeletal appearance upon release was a good approximation of how the five younger hostages appeared at the time, which only got worse. But the captors always had food, Herkin said.

Hamas propaganda videos from the period appeared to show Herkin in bloodied bandages and being dug out of debris from IDF bombing. The videos “were all fabricated,” he said. “You can calm down,” he said, adding that the mock blood was actually tomato paste and that the apparent debris was just sand.

In fact, said Herkin, his family realized that the video of him being dug out was a fake, because in it, he spoke Hebrew.

“I speak Russian. It’s my mother tongue,” said Herkin, who was raised in Kyiv. “Do you think that if I were being pulled out of the rubble… I would speak Hebrew? I would curse up three floors, in Russian, from A to Z.”

What was true in the videos, though, was Herkin’s description of the hostages as “corpses with a pulse” denied food and medicine.

An important lifeline in the tunnel was the ability to listen to Israeli radio, Herkin said. The hostages managed to receive Army Radio underground by using the wiring of the lighting as an antenna, something that worked only after the lights went off, Herkin said.

Another lifeline was memories of his family — especially his 5-year-old daughter Monica and his little brother Pete, 24 years Herkin’s junior.

On a cement arch in the tunnel, Herkin recalled, he wrote: “Monica is waiting for you at home, and Pete is waiting for you back home.”

Awaiting his reunion with Monica, who lives in Moscow with her mother, Herkin told Channel 12: “This is the date I’ve waited for for two years.”

Herkin was one of the 20 last living hostages, who were released on October 13 as part of the US-brokered Gaza ceasefire. The remains of 11 hostages are still in Gaza, including a soldier killed fighting in the 2014 Gaza war.