Mutual Fate

Before Simchas Torah 5784, the three men were strangers to each other, never imagining that something would bind their fates together in an unbreakable bond.

Almog Meir Jan, 21, from Or Yehuda, had been discharged from the army several months before he was kidnapped. Andrei Kozlov, 27, came to Israel the previous year from St. Petersburg, Russia, and was working as a security officer. And Shlomi Ziv from Moshav Elkosh in the north, the oldest among them, celebrated his forty-first birthday in captivity.

“I’m not a man of publicity and photographs,” Shlomi tells Mishpacha. And it isn’t just a cliche; to date, although his family has spoken to the media, he hasn’t yet given a single other interview. “I’m doing this now it only because I know how important it is to document all this,” he adds.

Almog agrees, relating how, once he returned from Gaza, he couldn’t believe that there are those who deny the horrors the terrorist are committing. “I was there, I was part of it, so how can they deny it?” he asks.

October 7, 2023, found all three men at the Nova event on Kibbutz Re’im, with Shlomi and Andrei both there as security officers. Feeling responsible for the welfare of the others, Shomi initially remained at his post, only fleeing when the gunfire drew closer.

“I passed the parking lot, heading in the direction of Gaza,” he recalls. “At one point, I could no longer run, and I hid behind a small bush. Someone ran up behind me, screaming ‘A terrorist is coming!’ and I heard gunshots.”

When the terrorist saw Shlomi, he motioned for him to come toward him. “From the first minute, I realized he was going to abduct me. I knew my fate was sealed, but there was nothing I could do,” he says.

At the same time, the terrorist spotted Andrei Kozlov, another one of the security guards at the event. “The terrorist motioned for me to call him,” Shlomi relates. “Andrei didn’t even understand what was going on. He thought at first that it was one of our soldiers. Then the terrorist asked me if I know how to drive. He sat me at the wheel, Andrei sat next to me, and the terrorist directed us to Gaza, about five miles away.”

During the short drive, Shlomi racked his brain thinking how he could get away. But his realistic conclusion was that he had no chance against hundreds of armed terrorists.

Almog had come to the event with his good friend, Tomer Sirosta, whose murder Almog learned about only after his rescue.

As soon as the early-morning missile fire started, the two friends got into their car and began to speed away. But then they noticed the terrorists on the road, and realized their only recourse was to try and flee on foot. They separated, and Almog hid between the bushes with four other young people who had fled — Elkanah Bohbot, Bar Cooperstein, Evyatar David, and Guy Gilboa Dalal — all of whom have been held in captivity for over a year now.

“There was a huge influx of terrorists with Kalashnikovs, RPGs, and grenades all around,” Almog recalls. “I decided to come out from the bush with my hands raised. They put me on the van with more people, and I felt like I was some kind of doll, unable to do anything. It was the most humiliating feeling in the world.”

No Chance of Escape

At first, Almog and his four friends were held in a storage room in an apartment. He recounts what happened afterward. “They took me to a different room and wrapped me up in a sheet. I was sure they were going to throw me into a grave. Who else gets wrapped in a sheet if not for a dead person? ‘Don’t kill me!’ I pleaded with them.

“They just laughed at me, and then proceeded to push me into the trunk of a car, sat on me, and punched and kicked me. One of them knocked the butt of his gun on my head. They treated me like I was a soldier in the elite Sayeret Matkal unit, as if I had the state’s most closely guarded secrets and I was their greatest enemy.”

What the terrorists didn’t know, and what Almog certainly wasn’t going to tell them, was that he’d actually been one of the soldiers operating the Iron Dome throughout the Gaza Envelope area during his IDF service, which certainly would have been of great interest to them.

He was driven to the apartment where Shlomi and Andrei were being held, but the men, who were blindfolded for the first three days and bound hand and foot, didn’t even see each other. “They took off the blindfolds only when we went to the bathroom or while we ate,” they relate.

The fear was overwhelming. Still, while the men didn’t exchange a word, the knowledge that they weren’t alone gave them strength. Of course, it never entered their minds that they would be spending the next eight months together, or that they’d be transferred to six other apartments, meeting new terrorists and captors each time. Finally, they were taken to Nusseirat, where they spent six months, tied up, without once seeing the light of day, guarded by terrorists who read them chapters from the Koran and gave them no opportunity to escape.

After the first three days of captivity, their blindfolds were removed, but their hands and legs remained tied for about two and a half months. Almog remembers the date when they were released from the handcuffs — it was 5 Teves.

The constant bombardments also caused them terrible fear. Shlomi recounts a particularly terrifying day, when Israeli intelligence warned all Gaza residents to leave the area, as they were going to bomb it.

“Within four minutes, no one was left in the neighborhood. We heard the women and children fleeing. Even those in the house with us fled — including all our captors, save for one. We remained tied up, hearing the planes in the sky, with the terrorist guarding us with a knife in his hand.”

They did consider overpowering the terrorist and running away, “but we realized there was no point,” Shlomi relates, “because even if we’d manage to get outside, what would happen? They would see us outside with the chains and realize exactly who we were.”

Almog remembers that as a very low point. “We understood there was no chance of escaping,” he says.

Shlomi says their captors made sure they’d heard about the tragic story of the three hostages who escaped and were mistakenly shot by the IDF, disillusioning them of any fantasies of rescue.

“Our captors were very explicit — they told us that if the IDF would come to rescue us, they’d murder us on the spot. If the soldiers would manage to reach us, they’d be bringing home dead bodies.”

Dreaming of Freedom

It’s not easy for Shlomi and Almog to look back at the months they spent in captivity. They say the hardest part was the uncertainty — they never knew what their fate would be in five minutes’ time, who would be coming to guard them, if they’d be moved somewhere else, and what kind of plans their evil captors had in store for them.

One of the hardest times, they say, was after the first hostage release deal on November 22. There was intense missile fire and bombardments, and situated as they were so close to the center of it all, they heard gunfire all night long. “The explosions were very close, the whole building was shaking,” Shlomi says.

They also remember the hunger, and the food distribution that they’d arranged among themselves: One got a bit more pita and the other a bit more cheese, depending on each one’s preferences. If they were given four dates instead of three, they would discuss what to do with the fourth date and who should eat it. Sometimes, they also kept a bit on the side, knowing they couldn’t count on their next meal.

What kept them from falling apart was their feeling of certainty that one day they would leave Gaza. “We never stopped believing that we’d go home,” Almog stresses. “I imagined myself at home all the time, what I was doing, and where I would go visit.

“But there were also disappointments. Every time we heard there might be a deal, we thought, ‘Maybe this time we’ll be surprised,’ but time and again our hopes were dashed.

Almog says that while Entebbe was obviously on everyone’s mind, they hoped for a deal more than for a rescue, because they assumed it would give them a better chance of getting out alive.

“We understood that if there would be a rescue, the IDF would come close and there would be gunfire and explosions, and our captors would surely hear it and fight back. We didn’t want to get into that kind of situation. We didn’t want the soldiers to endanger themselves for us, and we didn’t want to be in any more danger either.”

Almog says they knew about the hostages who were released, which left them with mixed feelings. “We were happy for the hostages who were released, but we were also very worried that after they released the women and children, we’d be forgotten about. Every so often, we heard that there was talk about a new deal and that got our hopes up and gave us strength. But a week later, we were told, ‘There’s no deal.’ Again a disappointment.

“The captors enjoyed telling us over and over again that ‘they don’t want you in Israel, it’s not important to them to get you back alive.’ And they always added, ‘Netanyahu doesn’t want you.’ ”

In retrospect, Almog says he really doesn’t understand how they were able to listen to these harsh and depressing statements without reacting. “You learn to hear and be quiet, to be smart and not right,” he explains. “Only our faith kept us going, and it was very strong.”

“Sometimes there were moments when I thought to myself, Wow, I hope I won’t forget how my mother looks, how my wife looks… And then I would imagine their faces in my head, and it gave me a good feeling,” Shlomi shares.

The dreams kept Almog strong also. “Every time I got up in the morning after dreaming about my family, I would tell Shlomi, ‘I saw my mother, I saw my father.’ It was very moving.”

One of the dreams he remembers was one where he saw himself sitting downstairs from his grandparents’ home with a suitcase in his hand, waiting for something. Shlomi was also there in the dream and Almog related that at one point, he said to Shlomi, “That’s it, I’m going up to them,” as if it were the simplest thing in the world to do.

Almog’s voice cracks when he describes it. “It was so easy. I went up in the elevator, and my grandmother opened the door and began to cry, and my grandfather was right behind her, and my mother behind him. Everyone was there and they were all saying, ‘We’re so happy you came, this is great, we were waiting for you!’ And then I got down on my knees and broke down crying.

“Suddenly I woke up and discovered that it was all a dream. I always shared my dreams with Shlomi, and he was able to calm me down and listen and also to support me when I suffered from nightmares.”

Despair Calendar

Shlomi and Almog didn’t know the names of their captors. “They all called themselves Mohammed,” they say. “We had five captors in the last apartment where we were, and they occasionally switched off.”

Almog gave them names based on their appearances — “Mohammed tall” for the tallest of them, “Mohammed bika” for the bald one, and “Mohammed chadudim,” for the one who harassed them the most.

“He was really unpredictable,” Almog says about their main captor, opting not to share more details about the daily abuse that turned their lives into a prolonged trauma. Today he knows his real name: Abdallah al Jamal, the owner of the house where they were hidden. Al Jamal, who was eliminated together with his father, Ahmad al Jamal, a doctor and imam at a local mosque that is run by Hamas, by the rescue forces during the operation, worked as a journalist and photographer for Al Jazeera, highlighting yet again the link between global media outlets and Hamas.

Their sole contact with the outside world came from the guards — who either brought them food or abused them. They could hear the Gazan family that lived downstairs, but never saw them.

Listening to Almog and Shlomi describe even just a bit of what they suffered is chilling. “Al Jamal would have fits of fury,” Shloimi says. “He would punch us and kick us in the stomach.”

There were times the men were starved, or were not allowed to use the facilities. Other times, they were locked in the bathroom or were forced to lie down while their captors piled blankets on top of them, practically suffocating them in the Gazan heat. They were allowed to shower once in two weeks, Almog shares, but until then, their captors would come by in the morning, smelling of cologne, and remark snidely, “Wow, you stink.”

Their captors toyed with them, often telling them they would be killed later that night, and threatening to take them down to the tunnels. At one point it seemed to Shlomi and Almog that they were going to make good on that threat, which they say was the most frightening possibility of all, but one of the captors persuaded the others not to do it.

“There were times when we would just hug and cry on each other,” Almog says. “Those were moments when we realized very clearly how important it was for us to be there for each other.”

The men tried anything they could to pass the time, creating sudoku puzzles for each other to solve, drawing pictures of scenery and lakes, and playing cards — sometimes with their captors.  “We ate the rice with our fingers, one grain at a time,” Almog describes.

In March, Almog took a piece of cardboard, marked it with squares, and turned it into a calendar. “I got eighty squares, but that was only because of the space on the board, not because I meant anything specific,” he says. “I told the others, ‘You’ll see, by the eightieth day we’ll be out of here.’

“It was sort of a despair chart. Every day, I made an X, and as the days passed, it looked like the chart would end and we’d still be in Gaza. When we got to the last row, and it was five days to the end of the chart, without any deal in sight, Shlomi and Andrei turned to me: ‘How are we going to get out of here?’ But I insisted it would happen. In the end, we were rescued on the 76th day.”

Midday Mirage

The rescue operation, retroactively named Operation Arnon after force commander Arnon Zemora who was fatally wounded while leading the rescue operation, was charted out for weeks, involved dozens of undercover agents, and was eventually pulled off in broad daylight.

For Shlomi and Almog, the rescue came as a complete surprise. The soldiers pushed them into a small bathroom to wait until they could create a safe evacuation route, and once their captors were dead, each once had a soldier to escort him. They ran barefoot into the Gaza street, through pools of blood, with glass under their feet, their first time in six months seeing daylight.

Under heavy fire, they moved toward the truck that took them away, while forces all around battled heavily-armed terrorists. When their escape vehicle was hit, the rescue team moved them into an APC, which took them some distance away until the heavy wheel chains began to sink into the coastal sand; it was quickly replaced by another vehicle that took them to a helicopter waiting to take them to safety and freedom.

Andrei, Shlomi, and Almog were flown to Tel Hashomer medical center in central Israel, where they were reunited with their families. After a short hospitalization they returned home, but nothing was the same.

“It’s a totally different life,” Shlomi says.

Almog agrees. “Everything has changed. People’s attitudes, how they look at you in the street, the feeling that everything that you do represents something. But the truth is that ultimately, I’m happy that I can represent something so big, and I’m even happier that I’m here.”

Almog faced heartbreaking news upon his return: His father had passed away just one day earlier. When the IDF officer called to inform him that Almog had been rescued, he didn’t answer the phone. His family then went over to the house, where they discovered him lifeless. So close to the end, his heart had given out, unable to withstand the pain he was in any longer.

The fate of the six hostages who were found in a tunnel within days of their murder at the end of August brought home to Shlomi and Almog how easily things could have been different for them. One of those six hostages was Alex Lobanov of Ashkelon, who left behind a wife and two children, one of whom was born while he was in captivity.

At some point, Alex was with the three. The terrorists told him that his name was on a list of hostages slated for release and instructed him to shower and shave, then separated him from the three others. But the release never came. Instead, he was taken to a tunnel and ultimately murdered by his captors.

Today, with the captives languishing for over a year in the now-decimated Gaza Strip, and a hostage rescue long since swallowed in the welter of Israeli politics, Shlomi and Almog have a message to the nation, and to those negotiating a partial hostage release: Don’t let anyone be left behind.

And their message to the other hostages still in captivity: “Have faith and be strong. And believe that your rescue can happen any day.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1042)