Oded Ben Ami, who was released from captivity after 491 days, participated today (Tuesday) in a discussion at the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee.
He spoke about the harsh conditions in captivity and described a particularly chilling incident he experienced a few weeks before his release. "I was 30 meters underground, with five other hostages whose families are here. A month before I was released, a commander, probably a senior one, came to us, called us over, loaded a Kalashnikov, and said, 'Choose three who are going to die, and three whom I'm going to shoot in the knee.'
They gave us the 'choice' of who would get a bullet in the head and who in the knee. We spent an entire hour in this discussion while they filmed it. They let each of us speak and say why we should live or die.
After an hour, when they made the decision for us, they held a lottery. Then they said, 'Before we shoot you, you have a chance for us to spare you.' And then we had to speak badly about the government in hopes that we might survive. Then, supposedly, they forgave us and we returned to our place. You sit there thinking, 'What just happened?' Understand that they live there under insane threat," Ben Ami described.
According to him, "The conditions are harsh, abuse, fear of dying from IDF bombings, worry that the kidnappers will take revenge because their friends or family members are being killed. There's no food when the crossings are closed; the situation is extremely difficult."
He noted that during his captivity, the kidnappers would tell them that the government had given up on them and the IDF wanted them dead. "At first, we didn’t believe it, but a month passed, then another month, and the feeling was that they really forgot about you. We would watch the protests on Al-Jazeera on Saturday nights, and that kept us going. As time passes, you begin to lose hope. I’m sure the hostages who are still there have broken mentally since the fighting resumed."