Ex-hostage recalls Passover in Gaza, says remaning captives ‘in chains’ during holiday

Freed hostage Agam Berger describes observing the Passover holiday last year while being held by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, and how keeping her Jewish faith helped her endure the hardships of captivity, in an op-ed published today for the Wall Street Journal.

“Even as Hamas tried to coerce me into converting to Islam — at times, forcing a hijab on my head — they couldn’t take away my soul,” writes Berger in the piece.

“Our faith and covenant with God, the story we remember on Passover, is more powerful than any cruel captor,” says Berger.

Berger, 20, says that throughout her 482 days in captivity, she chose to observe every Jewish fast that she could, refusing certain foods to keep kosher, and “chose not to light a fire on Shabbat to cook for my captors.”

“They stopped letting me cook altogether once they realized it was something I enjoyed,” she adds.

Berger writes that last Passover, she and fellow hostage Liri Albag, who was released with Berger, marked the holiday together “in a small room with no natural light.”

Berger says they tidied up the room and decorated with small scraps of paper, and that Liri surprised Berger by writing her “a makeshift Passover Haggadah, the text that recounts our ancestors’ journey out of slavery.”

The two women, along with Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, and Naama Levy, were kidnapped from the IDF’s Nahal Oz military base on October 7, 2023, and released by the terror group in late January as part of a hostage-ceasefire deal that has since collapsed.

”While I will celebrate this holiday with my family, it won’t yet be full. There are 59 hostages still held in Gaza, 24 of whom are believed to be alive. This is their second Passover in chains of iron. We can’t allow a third,” Berger continues.

“We are commanded to remember the Exodus every day. This demands that we continue our efforts to bring home our captive brothers, and to fight to ensure the atrocities of that autumn Sabbath never occur again,” she says.