Hamas allegedly tried to persuade starving Israeli hostages to convert to Islam in exchange for more food. According to accounts shared by the families of some of the 20 hostages released earlier this week, the hostages bravely refused.
Families of the freed captives, who were released under a ceasefire agreement brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump, described how Hamas attempted to pressure their loved ones into religious conversion during captivity — and how the malnourished prisoners courageously resisted those efforts:
The hostages also endured psychological terror. [Rom] Braslavski’s mother said his captors pressured him to convert to Islam, offering him extra food and better conditions, but he resisted. They also told him, falsely, that Israelis were too weak or uninterested to protest on his behalf, while inflating the IDF’s death toll and the damage inflicted on Israel.
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[Yosef-Haim] Ohana and another hostage were also made to listen to Muslim religious messages via a radio, his father said — a situation they managed to turn to their advantage. By playing with the radio’s wires, he said, they were able to tune into Israeli army radio, where Ohana heard his father being interviewed.
“He said to himself, ‘My father is alive! He is waiting for me!’ and it gave him new life,” the rabbi shared.
Breitbart News reports how one of the recently released hostages, Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier Matan Angrest, attended the funeral of his fellow soldier, Cpt. Daniel Perez, a tank commander killed by Hamas on October 7 whose body was taken to Gaza.
According to the Times of Israel, Angrest — the sole survivor of his tank unit — paid tribute to Perez and said that, just days after his release, he was ready to return to Gaza to help recover the remains of fallen comrades.
Hamas had pledged to return the bodies of 28 hostages but has so far returned only 11. One of the bodies delivered to Israel was later identified as that of a deceased Palestinian, not an Israeli hostage.
