From the Liveblog of
Tuesday, March 12, 2024
‘I have not resumed my life, I don’t know where I am’: Rescued hostage describes long days in Gaza
Rescued hostage Louis Har, 70, tells Channel 12 of the initial moments of the daring IDF operation last month that last saved him and his brother-in-law Fernando Marman, 61, the long days as hostages in Gaza, and his life back in Israel after 129 days as an abductee.
“It’s a matter of seconds. Suddenly, there was an explosion. The first thought was that the building was being bombed by the Israel Defense Forces. I rolled off the mattress where I was sleeping in the direction of the terrorists,” he says, describing the initial moments when members of the Shin Bet security agency and the police’s elite Yamam counterterrorism unit used explosives to breach the second-floor apartment in Rafah where the pair were being held and killed three terrorists guarding them.
Har described non-stop shooting in every direction the likes of which he hasn’t seen “even in movies,” he says.
“Suddenly they yelled: ‘Louis, over here!’ Someone grabbed my leg and said ‘IDF! IDF! We came to take you home,'” he recounts, saying the Israeli security forces protected them with their bodies as the battle went on.
Har and Marman were hustled into armored vehicles to a makeshift helipad deep inside Gaza, then transferred to a military helicopter that brought them to Israel.
“I asked the soldier sitting next to me: Are you sure we are not in a movie? I really had to pinch myself to make sure I was awake, that it wasn’t another one of my dreams,” he says.
“I have not resumed my life, I don’t know where I am,” he responds to a question about what it has been like to be back from Gaza. “It will take time. That’s the truth.”
Har was taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak to Gaza by Hamas terrorists on October 7, along with Har’s partner, Clara Marman, 62, Clara’s brother Fernando Marman, 60, sister Gabriela Leimberg, 59 and Gabriela’s daughter, Mia Leimberg, 17.
They were held together in a small, dark apartment until the women and teenager were released after 52 days as hostages, as part of a weeklong truce in November that saw the overall release of 105 abductees.
Har says he and Marman were told their release was imminent but quickly understood, as the bombings persisted, that they may have longer to wait.
The days passed “very slowly,” he says, recalling that they told each other stories to pass the time.
“I know Nando [Fernando] more than anyone else because I’ve never been with anyone so closely like that, 129 days,” he says. “We argued, we even laughed at ourselves.”
“We made sure the other didn’t break,” he says, describing that the two had moments where they cried.
There was no TV or radio and they ate one pita per day, sometimes with an onion or tomato if these were available, according to the report.
“We did what we could to survive,” he tells the interviewer, later saying he didn’t think he would get out of there alive.
Har says his captors often told them that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not interested in a deal to release the remaining hostages and that he preferred them dead. He says the terrorists went into detail about the tragic, mistaken killing of three hostages by IDF forces in December.
“We didn’t believe most things, but after all, this was psychological warfare so it does [affect] somehow,” says Har.
Har says he “didn’t know anything about what happened on October 7” when terrorists killed some 1,200 and took 253 hostages. “So every time, [we hear] a little bit, and a little bit more. It’s hard, I discover every time that another friend had been murdered.”
He says the hardest moment for him since being back was when he encountered a young man at one of the protests for the release of the hostages who told him that his cousin was part of the rescue operation.
“I told him to tell him…but he told me he was killed the previous week,” he says breaking down in tears. “It broke me completely. I don’t know who he was, but just the thought of it was difficult.”
The Times of Israel Community.