Freed hostage Daniella Gilboa: I prayed for my comrades for 30 minutes before being kidnapped

Freed hostage Daniella Gilboa pens her first Instagram post since she returned from Gaza eight days ago after 477 days in Hamas captivity, alongside photos of her with her boyfriend, family and friends after her return.

“What an insane year I have gone through,” Gilboa writes at the outset of the lengthy post, thanking the public for supporting her family, praying for her, not giving up on her and not believing the “horrible rumors” spread by the Hamas terror group about her supposed death.

She writes about her thoughts during the Hamas attack on her Nahal Oz base on October 7, 2023, saying her “last wish before I was kidnapped” was for people to not give up on her.

“I didn’t want to despair and say goodbye, so instead I prayed and wholeheartedly believed that the end of me wasn’t there, in that bomb shelter,” she writes. “I prayed for all the girls with me for 30 minutes because I felt like I couldn’t do anything better at the time… I knew that the only thing that could save us was faith.”

She says that yesterday, she and the four other IDF surveillance soldiers released in recent days recited Birkat Hagomel, a Jewish blessing of gratitude said by people who have survived grave danger.

“This was the moment I was waiting for since surviving October 7,” Gilboa says. “To thank God for saving me from the worst against all odds.”

She recalls meeting her loved ones following her release, thanking them for working for her release, and saying she had worried about her family more than about herself.

She mentions her boyfriend Roy, “the love of my love who gave me so much strength from afar. You would come to me in my dreams, in my thoughts at all times of day. For more than a year, we were together in heart and in spirit. I love you.”

She also thanks the IDF soldiers who have fought the lengthy war, says she’s thankful for the opportunity to memorialize the 53 soldiers killed at the Nahal Oz base on October 7, and hopes for the imminent return of all the hostages.

“Who knows better than me that you, the people of Israel, those who fight with all their might, are giving [the hostages] a small hope amid the vast darkness.”