Moran had already been arrested twice by Hamas groups, she said, but had convinced them by insisting she was not Jewish. The third time, her captors were different. “They didn’t talk, they just grabbed me,” he recalls. “Everyone started running, I jumped and broke my leg and they caught me,” he noted.
“They started throwing me from one to the other and put me in the car. Two terrorists in the front, four in the back seat, three more in the trunk, and just me on top of them all.” As they crossed the Gaza border, Moran glanced at the crowd on the other side of the fence, before quickly closing her eyes.
“It was like a bull entering a huge arena,” he tells the BBC. “Everyone is happy – the children, the women, the men. It was a lot of people.”
“She was held with another woman, who was 18…Moran, who understands a little Arabic, remembers overhearing their captors discuss who would take the women as their wives…Moran says she lost 12% of her bodyweight, and her hair, during 54 days in Gaza.”
— Jotam Confino (@mrconfino) April 27, 2024
“I felt like someone was trying to pull my leg… All you can think at that moment is: please, let it end quickly. One hit to the head and I won’t feel a thing. If it’s going to happen, do it quickly.”
But the car door closed again and the vehicle began to drive away, along with Moran. She says she later learned that the group holding her had sold her to Hamas.
It was the beginning of Moran’s 54 days of captivity. During this time, he was transported to seven different locations, quickly learning survival strategies. “You really have to protect your story,” he explains. “What happens in the first house stays there and doesn’t come with you to the second house or the third house.”
Each time, she says, it was important to pretend that everything at the previous location was fine and that her captors were her friends.
At one point, she was held with another woman, who was 18, and kidnapped while barefoot and still wearing her pyjamas. Moran, who understands little Arabic, remembers hearing their captors discussing who would take the women as their wives.
Asked if she was sexually assaulted during her captivity, Moran says she was not, but that she has heard from other female hostages that they were raped during their time in Gaza. She described being beaten by her captors, while also referring to the mental terror of being powerless in a situation that can change in a second.
One day, he said, they sat down to play cards with their captors. “I was so hungry, I was trying to make them laugh so they would bring us something to eat,” she recalls.
“One of the kidnappers was mocking me. I got angry and said something as a joke. He runs into the other room, comes back and points a gun at my head, yells and screams that he’s going to kill me, blow my head in the air.”
After 54 days in captivity, he was freed under a ceasefire deal last November in exchange for Palestinian prisoners in Israeli prisons.
Hamas captors filmed the handover, where she and other hostages are seen smiling and thanking their captors before boarding a Red Cross bus to leave Gaza.
Many people then remarked that they looked good and even happy. “They made us smile and say thank you,” says Moran. “No one heard my whispers to the boy next to me: wait, five more minutes, don’t start crying now, keep smiling.”
Israeli officials believe about 30 of the 133 hostages remaining in Gaza are dead. Hopes of another ceasefire agreement that would secure their release have faded.
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