Israeli-Serbian citizen Alon Ohel (24), who spent more than two years in Hamas captivity after the terrorist attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, told Israel’s Channel 12 that he spent a year and a half with his legs chained, and that he and other hostages were deliberately starved.
“They take away your freedom of movement by putting chains on your legs,” said Alon Ohel in his first extended interview since his release on October 13 this year, as reported by the Times of Israel.
He says Hamas members treated him like a monkey. “I would eat like a dog. You are no longer a person, you are an animal,” he added.
Ohel emphasized that even in prisons there is a system by which things function, but that he was not in a prison — he was in captivity. As he said, under such conditions anyone who is not mentally strong can go insane.
He added that Hamas members had food, but that he and the other hostages were starved. At one point, all he received to eat were dried dates. At that time, he notes, he looked like a skeleton.
“You get used to starving and the constant aches in your body,” he said, stressing that he spent hours just “lying like a corpse.”
Alon said that the strength to endure came from videos of Israeli demonstrators who demanded that he and the other hostages be freed.
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The young man says that during captivity, Eli Sharabi — a hostage who was released in the previous exchange — became like a father figure to him.
“We connected from the first moment,” Ohel said, recalling how Sharabi hugged him like a father in moments of frustration when he could no longer endure.
“Many times he carried me on his back,” Ohel added.
Sharabi was also kidnapped on October 7, 2023, and his wife and children were killed that same day. He learned about the death of his family only after being freed from Gaza and returning to Israel.
“Eli would say that it’s okay to break, fall apart, cry, but that you must never lose hope,” Ohel said.
He notes that while in captivity he consciously made the decision to stay alive, and at night he would talk to his mother, who was far away waiting for his return.
“I told her that everything was fine, that I was alive. I said that to her, out loud. I knew I had to do it, to talk to my mom so that maybe she could feel me,” he said.
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Source: N1, Foto: AFP/ Israeli Army