Family of hostage Yosef-Haim Ohana says it received evidence he is alive
Aunt says relatives fear for 24-year-old after seeing deplorable state of returning captives, amid accounts of torture and starvation: ‘There are limits to a person’s strength’
The family of a man taken hostage on October 7, 2023, said Wednesday it had received a “clear” signal that he is still alive, but expressed fears for his fate following the release of three Israelis over the weekend looking emaciated and sickly after 16 months of Hamas captivity.
Yosef-Haim Ohana, 24, was kidnapped from the Nova desert rave as he and a friend attempted to provide aid to injured partygoers amid the terrorist onslaught.
“We have a clear indication that he is alive,” Ohana’s aunt Hana Mastronov told the Ynet news site Wednesday. “There are signs showing that he is alive.”
Mastronov did not elaborate, but her comments came after several families of other hostages said they received indications that their loved ones were alive, information thought to have come from captives freed over the past three weeks under a shaky ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and the Hamas terror group.
Ohana’s family has largely remained out of the limelight, eschewing politics in favor of faith. But with Hamas warning it will delay the release of more hostages, and Israel and the US threatening to abandon the ceasefire in response, Mastronov said relatives felt they had to speak out to help the public understand the severity of the situation.
“When we saw the people who returned this past Saturday, it broke us even more than we were already broken. That is why we chose to speak to the media,” Mastronov said. “[He is a] strong guy, both in mind and body. But there are limits to how much strength a person has. We’re coming up on 500 days. We didn’t think it would last this long.”
Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi were released by the Hamas terror group Saturday looking gaunt and unsteady on their feet, 16 months after they were kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri and the Nova music festival.
The three were suffering from severe physical and mental deterioration, including malnutrition, decreased muscle mass, heart disorders, and prolonged infection, according to health officials quoted by Hebrew media on Sunday.
Images of the trio prompted angry Israeli complaints and a demand from US President Donald Trump, partially endorsed by Israel, that Hamas release all remaining hostages Saturday or face a return to fighting. While some hostage families have backed the demand, others have expressed worries that they could lose the only chance to get their loved ones out alive.
“They should not stop [the deal] but keep it going continuously,” Mastronov said. She noted that the family had no issue with women and the elderly or infirm getting out first, “but you can’t rely on the youngsters surviving forever.”
Like many other young men held hostage, Ohana is only slated to be released in a second phase of the deal, though the flurry of warnings and threats between Trump, Hamas and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have thrown the truce’s survival into serious doubt.
Little is known publicly about the condition of Ohana. The Kiryat Malachi native, who had been working as a bartender in Tel Aviv before his kidnapping, was last seen trying to hide next to a car as a terrorist fired a rocket-propelled grenade at him and a friend.
On Monday, the mother of hostage Alon Ohel, 24, said they received a first sign of life from her son, revealing that he was being held in chains, starved and untreated for shrapnel in his shoulder, arm and now-partially blinded eye.
“We’ve been learning more and more details since Saturday and can no longer remain silent,” Idit Ohel told Army Radio on Monday, as her hostage son marked his 24th birthday. “The prime minister can’t say he didn’t know, can’t say he didn’t hear and wasn’t notified about the state of the hostages. Every day there is hell.”
Vicky Cohen, mother of 20-year-old captive soldier Nimrod Cohen, told Channel 12 Monday that a returning hostage had provided information about her son’s captivity, saying he was in poor physical and mental shape.
A day earlier, the mother of hostage Eliya Cohen, 27, said her son had been held with returning hostages who were chained, gagged, burned with a searing hot object, hung by the feet and starved.
Sigi Cohen said the hostages testified that her son is being held in a tunnel, has been chained for the entire length of his captivity, gets little food or daylight, and suffers from an untreated bullet wound to the leg sustained during the Hamas onslaught.
Seventy-three hostages kidnapped on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas has so far released 21 hostages — civilians, soldiers, and Thai nationals — during the ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier killed in 2014 was recovered from Gaza in January.
