Nega Weiss, 18, who was kidnapped to Gaza from her home in Kibbutz Bari on October 7, said that one of her captors said he would marry her. “He brought a ring on the 14th day, and I stayed with him until the 50th day. He said everyone was going home and I was staying to raise his children,” she said in her testimony published this evening (Thursday) on News 12.
Weiss’s father, Ilan, was murdered in a Hamas attack, and she was separated from her mother Shiri when she was kidnapped and thought she was dead. Weiss said that after a few days in captivity she was reunited with her mother, because her captor wanted to ask her for Nega’s hand. “One of the Hamasniks said that he loves me, that he wants to marry me and that he brought my mother for me so that she would approve of us getting married,” she said. “A woman enters in an Arab costume and I realize it’s my mother. I thought she was murdered, I thought I was alone. Suddenly she’s alive and I’m not alone.”
Weiss and her mother were released in a deal with Hamas on November 25. In the interview, she recalled the day of the kidnapping and said: “They start shooting at the door, something like 40 shots until they manage to get in. We see the conversations on WhatsApp and understand what is happening. People write that their house is on fire and stop answering. Mom told me to get under the bed, she thought Let them come and shoot her straight away. I went under the bed, they came and kidnapped her. After they took her out, I heard gunshots, I thought she was murdered and not kidnapped.”
closure
Venga Weiss songs on the day of their release from captivity. “I can’t digest, neither then nor now. People don’t understand the feeling of fear” Photo: IDF spokesperson
Venga Weiss songs on the day of their release from captivity. “I can’t digest, neither then nor now. People don’t understand the feeling of fear” Photo: IDF spokesperson
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She described how she ran trying to hide from the terrorists, but one of them spotted her. “They took me to the yard of one house, sat me there. Something like forty terrorists around me with Kalashnikovs, handcuffed me, I see bodies of people I know from the kibbutz. After a few minutes they put me in a car and start driving.” According to her, thousands of people, including children, cheered when the vehicle entered Gaza, and tried to beat her. “I didn’t understand why they were delaying shooting me,” she said.
Weiss was held captive with Moran Stella Yanai, and said that on her second night in Gaza, she was awakened by the bomb and the window next to which she was sleeping shattered and injured her. “They took us through the night wearing a hijab, the Hamasniks held our hands so that people would think we were married, so that there would be nothing suspicious. They brought cards to play with, and I said well, I’ll play with them, I’ll do whatever they want, as long as they don’t shoot. Their moods changed every So fast. Once they played with us and laughed, a second later they came with a gun.”
She said that her captors tried to convince them that “Israel is theirs, that they occupied the house. One said he was an elementary school teacher, and only talked about the fact that we kicked them out of their house and how wrong it was.” One of the days, when she returned, the Hamas people moved her to another house where she met her mother. According to her, the returnee who wanted to marry her told her that “he was the one who insisted that we unite our sons so that she would give him the permission.”
According to her, “I can’t digest, neither then nor now. People don’t understand the feeling of fear, I was 50 days, 24/7, with the thought that they would get tired and come shoot me, or they wouldn’t need me in the end. Let’s say at night they lock us in a room, so That they will open the door in the middle of the night and shoot us without us knowing.” Weiss said that as long as there are abductees in Gaza, she cannot mourn her father. “They were there for an indescribable amount of time. At one point they brought us half a liter of water for two days. It doesn’t make sense. You can’t survive like this for 200 days.”
