[IsraelTimes] Freed hostage Omer Wenkert recalls the conditions of his captivity in Hamas’s tunnels worsening with the Israeli offensive on Rafah, in southern Gaza, in May 2024.
“They intentionally starved me,” he tells the Bar Association conference, adding that he was fed half a pita a day for two or three weeks.
“Around the entry to Rafah, [there was] intentional starvation, and intentional abuse,” he says. “They did things that seriously endangered my life, for fun.”
“One of them brought insect repellent, stood me up at the end of the corridor, and sprayed me in the face, with my eyes open,” Wenkert recalls, adding that his captor ensured everything the captive would touch was also sprayed.
“He also decided to hit me with an iron rod,” he adds.
Wenkert says he was alone for six and a half months, saying his captors would “approach me once in a while.”
He says that around the 80th day of his captivity, he was moved from one underground corridor to another, which he describes as “a dark room with a little lamp.”
“They tried to drive me crazy — to damage my sense of time,” he says. “When they put down food for me, they told me to turn around, so they could leave. Bathing was once in 50 days, with a little bottle. Only after nine and a half months did I bathe for real.”
The tunnel he was kept in for most of his captivity was “about 90 centimeters (35 inches) wide, and about 9-10 meters (29-32 feet) long,” with a hole as a bathroom, he recalls.
“I was on a small mattress, with my back against the wall. I was there for 420 days, I think,” he says.
On June 13, 2024, his captors brought fellow hostages Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal to the same corridor in which Wenkert was kept. They are both still held in Hamas captivity, 597 days since their abduction on October 7, 2023.
“My mental situation settled down [with their arrival], but it became more crowded; we split food and water, the physical conditions worsened — but the abuse stopped,” Wenkert says.
Wenkert was released on February 22, 2025, after 505 days in Hamas captivity, as part of a hostage release, ceasefire, and prisoner release deal between Israel and the terror group that ultimately collapsed after its first phase.
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