Posted on 12/26/23
| News Source: Arutz-7
Hamas terrorists told one of their child hostages that the State of Israel had been destroyed, one of many lies told to break the hostages.
Eitan Yahalomi, a 12-year-old boy who was freed in late November after 50 days in captivity, told Ynet that his captors lied to him about his family's fate.
“Sometimes they would tell me that they would take me to be with her, and I had hope,” Eitan said.
“I imagined what had happened to my family and tried to speak with them inside my head. I was afraid that perhaps something had happened to them," he said. “The terrorists told me that the kibbutz no longer existed and the State of Israel didn’t exist."
Ohad, Eitan's father, was out protecting his family on the morning of October 7 and was shot by terrorists and kidnapped to Gaza. His mother, Batsheva, and two sisters were initially kidnapped as well but managed to escape when two IDF tanks appeared and scared their captors.
After Eitan was freed, his aunt, Devora Cohen, told French television station BFM that the terrorists forced her young nephew to watch videos they took from the massacre of October 7.
"The Hamas terrorists forced him to watch films of the horrors, the kind that no one wants to see, they forced him to watch them,” Cohen said.
She stated, "Yesterday we were so happy" to have him home, "but now, when I know that, I worry" about him.
“How can you feel good about an experience like that?” she asked. “He’s a quiet child, it’s going to take him time to let his emotions out.”
She called the Hamas terrorists who held Eitan captive "monsters" and stated that if any child who was being held captive cried, “they threatened them with rifles to shut them up.”
“When he arrived in Gaza, all the residents, everyone, beat him. He is a 12-year-old child,” Cohen said. "Maybe I'm naive, I really wanted to hope he was treated humanely but it seems he wasn't."