Former Hamas hostage says she stabbed captors multiple times to protect husband

Former Hamas hostage Rimon Buchshtab-Kirscht reveals in an interview with Channel 12 news that she stabbed her captors on multiple occasions during her abduction and captivity.

Buchshtab-Kirscht, who was kidnapped alongside her husband, Yagev Buchshtab, from Kibbutz Nirim during the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, says she felt compelled to protect him by any means necessary, “even if it meant attacking a terrorist” or taking beatings in his place.

“If you need to stab a terrorist, you stab a terrorist,” she says.

She recalls stabbing the first terrorist who entered her home on October 7 with a kitchen knife.

On another occasion, she says she stabbed one of her captors with a fork she hid after he entered the room where she and her husband were being held, intending to beat Yagev.

After she stabbed him, the terrorist asked her in English, “You crazy?” Buchshtab-Kirscht replied in Arabic: “No, I’m crazy.”

She adds that she refused to read from a script Hamas operatives handed her while filming a hostage propaganda video alongside fellow hostages Danielle Aloni and Lena Trufanov. She says the refusal was met with a brutal beating that left her with broken teeth.

Buchshtab-Kirscht was 36 when she was abducted by Hamas during its October 7 terror onslaught, and returned to Israel as part of a hostage-prisoner exchange and ceasefire deal that November. Footage showing Buchshtab-Kirscht visibly talking back to a terror operative upon her release went viral.

More than two years after her release, Buchshtab-Kirscht broke her silence earlier this week in her first long-form interview with Ynet news.