At mass Tel Aviv rally, rescued Hamas hostage says he spent ‘two months in hell’ with murdered captive

Andrey Kozlov, who was freed from Hamas captivity in June along with three other hostages in an Israeli rescue operation, speaks at a massive rally taking place in Tel Aviv to pressure the government to close a hostage-ceasefire deal.

“I don’t know why, but I am blessed, I am here. Hersh, Eden, Carmel, Ori, Almog and Alex are not,” he tells the crowd, which is estimated to be in the hundreds of thousands, referring to six hostages whose bodies were recovered from Gaza last week after they were executed by Hamas days earlier.

“Alex [Lobanov] was with us in hell for two months, he told me his life story. We shared our fears and hopes. They took him and told us he will go home in the end of November. He should have been here with us,” the former hostage says.

Behind Kozlov on the stage are posters of the 97 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 believed to remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.

Speaking at the same rally, Shai Dickman, cousin of murdered hostage Carmel Gat, blames the government for the fact that she did not come home alive: “We were a step away from being able to embrace, but the military pressure led to her death,” she says. “My prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, you sabotaged a deal, you killed her. So, too, (Ministers) Smotrich, Regev, Levin, Katz, Dichter. You sabotaged a deal, you killed her.”

Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 37 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.