Moran Stella Yanai went through a harrowing experience during her 54-day captivity in Gaza. In a recent interview, the 40-year-old jewellery designer recounted how she tried to hide in a potato field as Hamas gunmen raided the site of the Nova music festival in Israel near the Gaza border on October 7 last year.
Ms Yanai had been caught twice before by them but managed to convince them she was Arab, not Jewish. However, during her third encounter, her captors were different. “They didn’t talk, they just grabbed me,” she told BBC, recalling how they had “started to throw me from one to the other, and put me in the car.”
She also revealed that “two terrorists in the front, four in the backseat, three more in the [boot], and only me on top of everybody.”
As Ms Yanai crossed the Gaza border, she caught a glimpse of the crowd on the other side of the fence including “happy” women, children and men. “It was like a bull being entered into a huge arena,” she explained.
The car abruptly stopped, and Ms Yanai felt someone tugging at her leg. At that moment, she prayed for a quick end. She said, “All you can think of at that point is: please let it end fast. One hit to the head, and I will not feel anything. If it’s happening, make it fast.”
But she later discovered that the group holding her had sold her to Hamas, which marked the beginning of 54 days of captivity for her. During that time, she was moved to 7 different locations, quickly adapting to different survival strategies. “You really need to protect your story,” she explained to the BBC. “What happens in the first house stays there, and doesn’t come with you to the second house [or] the third house.”
At one point, Ms Yanai was held with another woman, an 18-year-old who was taken while she was barefoot and in her pajamas. Ms Yanai overheard their captors discussing who would marry the woman and recalled a disturbing incident when their captors brought in the younger woman’s mother, asking for permission to marry her daughter. This 18-year-old woman is presumed to be Noga Weiss, who recently recounted her 50-day captivity period in Gaza.
Ms Yanai shared that she herself was not sexually assaulted during her captivity, but she learned from other female hostages that they had been raped while in Gaza.
She described the unsettling process of being “examined” when moving between houses, saying, “It’s a ‘really necessary test’ as they explain it to you.” She said, “I always try to explain to people that ‘rape’ is a really big word. It’s not only the act. Even when a guy stands in front of your door, and you’re sitting down, and he’s staring at you for 10 minutes straight, five to six times a day, every day, for 54 days. Trust me; that’s a rape.”
She recounted how one day, she and the other hostages had to play cards with their captors to try to get something to eat because they were “so hungry”. Ms Yanai tried to make them laugh with jokes. But one captor got angry and pointed a gun at her head, threatening to kill her.
Moran Stella Yanai was released after 54 days on November 29 as part of a temporary ceasefire agreement facilitated by Qatar and the United States between Hamas and Israel.
