'Beaten, spat on, held in a sq metre cell': Hostage's painful ordeal reveals 'he knew' when Gaza truce failed

Freed Israeli hostage Omer Wenkert said on Wednesday (March 12) that he always 'knew' when Israel-Hamas peace talks were not on track and the ceasefire between them had fallen through, or a senior Hamas operative was killed, because the Palestinian militant group would take it out on him.

Wenkert said he could understand what was happening, although all the hostages were cut off from the outside world during their hundreds of days of captivity.

"Every deal that fell through would bring up a lot of frustration, rage, and anger,” Wenkert said, highlighting the painful ordeal of hostages in an interview with Channel 12 news.

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“Not to mention when one of their fathers was killed, or their families, or when their senior officials were assassinated. You feel it. You know exactly what happened," he said.

He further explained that in such cases, Hamas militants used to beat them, spat on them, and forced them to do strenuous physical exercise.

“I was very weak physically,” he said, adding that his captors’ goal was “humiliation.”

'I wet my pants'

Wenkert, in an interview, shared his day-by-day timeline in captivity, starting with the day he was taken hostage while he was driving down to the Nova music festival with his best friend Kim Damti.

Wenkert initially thought that “there was a group of three or four terrorists, and in a moment the IDF will come and take them out. You don’t consider the possibility they will reach Re’im; it’s almost five kilometres from the border. And then the shooting started.”

“What I remember is that the last time I saw on my watch was 7:29 a.m. and the same second I read that, someone says, ‘Get in, get in. There are terrorists.’ I hear, ‘Allahu Akbar,’ a grenade strike inside the shelter and everyone gets down. Explosion," he added.

Wenkert said one of the terrorists told him he would not shoot him. He then understood he was being kidnapped. “I saw them coming toward me, I wet my pants.”

Wenkert continued to explain the treatment he faced by the Hamas group and said that the captors told him he would be released in a day or two afterward the first ceasefire-hostage deal. However, the ceasefire ended, and he was transferred to a one-square-metre cell.

(With inputs from agencies)