Regards from a dead partner: Relative relays ‘psychological terror’ faced by hostage

When Gadi Mozes was held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip, his captors at one point told him his partner had asked to send him her regards — only for him to later find out she had been murdered on the day of his capture.

The lie was part of what his daughter-in-law described as psychological terror the 80-year-old faced while in captivity for nearly 16 months.

In an interview published Wednesday, Einav Mozes-Aurbach spoke of the conditions Mozes had endured, and of how he kept his spirits up despite it all.

Mozes and six of his family members were snatched from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.

For some 70 days of his captivity, Mozes was in complete isolation, locked alone in a dark room. He was moved between several apartments over the course of the war and was not held in tunnels as some hostages are.

Even when he was not alone, Mozes never met any other hostages until the last days of his captivity. His guards occasionally let him see news from Israel, including reports of demonstrations calling for the return of the hostages, which, Mozes-Aurbach said, gave him some comfort.

At one point, his captors told him that his partner, Efrat Katz, had sent him her regards, but during one of the news reports from Israel, he learned that she had been killed on October 7.

“That was a big crisis for him,” Mozes-Aurbach told the outlet. “He realized that he could not believe anything they said to him.”

Mozes-Aurbach said her father-in-law was “in shock” following his abduction. “He couldn’t believe how the country and the army had abandoned the residents.”

She said that while being held in apartments, there were occasions when the windows shattered from nearby IDF strikes as the Israeli military battled Hamas.

“Aside from the difficulties, to be completely alone was terrible,” she said. “The loneliness was one of the hardest things for him there.”

Mozes-Aurbach noted that other freed hostages, some of whom were held together, have described how they lifted each others’ spirits, whereas Mozes “needed to pick himself up by his own efforts.”

She said that now that he has been freed, he craves company, meeting friends every day.

“He says, ‘I’m thirsty for human discourse, for human warmth.'”

Mozes-Aurbach noted that Gadi speaks basic Arabic and tried to connect with his captors, but was not always able to.

“There were days when he was in totally isolation,” she said. “There were situations where he thought, ‘that’s it,'” and feared he would be killed.

Sometimes such fears were born of misunderstandings, but sometimes his captors “led him to feel that way, that this is it, it’s over.”

She said he dealt with “a terrible reality, in substandard conditions, psychological terror, hunger.”

He was given dry pita bread to eat, sometimes with humus. At other times he could go 24 hours without being given any food.

Yet he found ways to take care of himself, doing math in his head, speaking to himself, and taking daily walks in the confined space he was kept in. It has been previously reported that he would walk up to seven kilometers a day, pacing back and forth in the tiny space.

“Each time he had dark thoughts, he lifted himself up and started walking,” Mozes-Aurbach said.

The first Israeli he met was 29-year-old Arbel Yehoud, as they were brought together a few days ahead of their joint release. She too had been kept alone for the duration of her capitivity.

Mozes-Aurbach spoke of how moving that moment was for Gadi, as he is a long-time friend of Yehoud’s father.

“It wasn’t just to meet an Israeli or to speak Hebrew for the first time in 16 months, it was to meet a family member.”

She said that during the chaotic moments of their release together, when the two were surrounded by a mob of hundreds as masked Hamas gunmen tried to maintain control, “they felt mortal fear.”

“He felt that the situation was getting out of control, and that in a moment they would be lynched. He really thought that he would not get out of there alive. It was very difficult and traumatic.”

While in captivity, he felt “disappointment and abandonment.” Since his return, “he has been touched by the solidarity of the people, as he says — but he still feels pained by the leadership’s continued neglect of him and those who are still there,” she said.

Not a day goes by in which he doesn’t speak “of the urgency to get [all the hostages] out of the hell of Gaza,” and he is already eager to join the public campaign for the hostages.

The ceasefire agreement reached last month halted some 15 months of fighting triggered by Hamas’s invasion of Israel.

The first phase of the deal is to see the release of 33 hostages for many hundreds of Palestinian prisoners, including convicted killers. The potential second and third phases, if agreed upon, would see the return of the rest of the hostages and an end to the war.

However, the deal has been thrown into disarray after Hamas said Monday it would not release the next scheduled batch of hostages Saturday, alleging Israeli violations of the ceasefire. On Thursday it walked back this declaration.

While Israel has said it will return to war if the captives are not set free, mediators Egypt and Qatar have worked to keep the deal on track.