Former Hamas hostage: Footage of tens of thousands protesting ‘filled me with hope’ during captivity in Gaza

7 September 2024, 6:24 pm

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Sapir Cohen, who was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7 and held hostage for 55 days, holds up a poster of her boyfriend Sasha Trufanov, still held in Gaza, during an event at Yeshiva University's Stern College for Women on August 27, 2024, in New York City. (Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/AFP)

Former Hamas hostage Sapir Cohen encourages the public to take to the streets tonight, saying the one thing that gave her hope during her five-week captivity in Gaza was the sight of “tens of thousands of people, all united, and all with one common goal: to bring us home alive.”

“Every day, I think about all the hostages and my partner Sasha [Trufanov] who remain behind. I remember those dark and difficult days when I lay in a tunnel, curled up from hunger. But one day, I was filled with hope. That was the day I saw you on television,” she says in a statement from the Hostages Families Forum ahead of mass rallies planned across the country.

Cohen, 29, was one of 105 hostages released from Gaza as part of an extension of a temporary cease-fire deal in November. She was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’s October 7 massacre, along with her boyfriend, his mother, and his grandmother.

“You gave me the strength to carry on, and I ask you to take to the streets and continue to strengthen all the hostages who remain behind.”

Israelis carry coffins symbolizing hostages murdered by the Hamas terror group in Gaza, as they protest in Tel Aviv for the release of remaining captives, September 5, 2024. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)

Speakers at the weekly Tel Aviv rally this evening will include Andrey Kozlov, a former hostage rescued from Gaza in an IDF operation; former hostage Danielle Aloni who was released along with her young daughter Emilia during the November ceasefire and Shay Dickmann, cousin of Carmel Gat, whose murder was announced by the IDF earlier this week along with five other hostages.

A parallel rally in Jerusalem will include Ella Mor, aunt of former hostage 4-year-old Avigail Idan whose parents were murdered on October 7 and Moshe Shapira, father of Aner Shapira, who fended off seven grenades from a bomb shelter near the Nova party on October 7 before he was killed, and was the best friend of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was one of the six hostages murdered last week.

It is believed that 97 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 33 confirmed dead by the IDF.