'I choose life:' Ex-hostage Alon Ohel recounts Hamas kidnapping, torture, sexual harassment - N12

"They would play with the amounts of food, and sexually harassment," Ohel said.

"You go into the shower, and the terrorist comes to shampoo you. He puts shampoo in his hand and starts soaping you in the shower. He touches you," he recounted.

Ohel tried to move away from the sexually abusive terrorist, telling him that he could wash alone, but the terrorist continued.

"He said it was important to him that I shower well, so that I don't get rashes. Luckily, the sexual abuse didn't go further," Ohel added.

Ohel told N12 about the moment when Hamas terrorists kidnapped him.

"They threw me like a sack of potatoes into the pickup truck. I was in shock, and asked myself if I was dreaming," Ohel said.

"I saw someone jump from the pickup, and they took him apart. I told myself, 'No matter what, I choose life,'" he added.

"They started driving, and within seconds, we were in Gaza. I was in shock. We passed a gate, and boom, Gaza. You say 'f***, where is the air force? What is happening?" he stated.

"All of my hair was full of concrete from the shelter I was hiding in, and I was dripping endless blood with crazy amounts of pain in my head, shoulder, and eye. I couldn't see," he recounted.

Ohel noted how they arrived at a hospital, and saw a large crowd of Gazans full of hatred for the hostages.

"You can't call them uninvolved," Ohel said, describing the crowd. "Everyone there is involved," he affirmed.

"I screamed to them that I could not see, and they took off my clothes while trying to make sure people did not come in," he said, adding that they were taken to a house next to the hospital and were given anesthesia. "I woke up the next day, and could not breathe from the pain," he recalled.

Ohel recounted that the terrorists sewed the hostages up "in a degrading manner," without applying anesthesia, forbidding them to scream or speak.

"In the first two weeks, we didn't speak. I sat there with people and had no idea who they were," Ohel said.

"They take you in a moment from life. I'm a 22-year-old. What do I know about life? They tore me from reality and put me in hell in a second," he stated.

When Ohel closes his left eye, his vision becomes blurry, but when both of his eyes are open, he is able to see, N12 noted.

However, he recounts that he always knew he was going to "come back to my mother in the end, whatever happens."

Shortly before his eye surgery upon his return to Israel, doctors explained the procedure to Ohel, checking that he understood. One moment during the surgery he was laughing, and then the next moment he would cry, N12 said.

"In Gaza they took away my rights of movement, freedom, and liberty, but not the right to choose to be a victor," Ohel said.

"You break down all the time, but [fellow hostage] Eli [Sharabi] would tell me 'it is ok to break, but you must never lose hope,'" Ohel remembered.

"We ran from the Nova music festival the moment the bombing started," Ohel recalls.

"We saw the interceptions and said, 'we are out of here.' We thought of stopping at a shelter, and I really wanted to continue running once the rockets ended. We stood in the shelter, but the rockets didn't stop. Even more so, we started hearing Kalashnikovs. 'Where is the army?' we asked. You were simply waiting for your death," he continued.

"After Shapira was murdered, there was a grenade that Hersh [Goldberg-Polin] came to throw. I screamed at him to throw it, but he didn't make it in time. The grenade exploded a few centimeters from Hersh and blew up his hand. I saw everything, and think that was the grenade that blew up my eye," Ohel remembered.

The interviewer asked if Ohel felt that the IDF knew where they were.

"Absolutely not," he answered. "I'm afraid of the army that was supposed to protect me. They didn't know anything."

Ohel recounted how he was taken into a terror tunnel after 52 days, meeting Eli Sharabi, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino, and Goldberg-Polin.

However, shortly afterwards, Sarusi, Danino, and Goldberg-Polin were taken away, with Ohel recounting how he felt sure they were being taken to be released. In fact, they were taken to be a different tunnel, where they were murdered by terrorists in August 2024.

Ohel was left in a tunnel with Eliya Cohen and Sharabi, who Ohel describes as a father to him during their captivity.

"From the beginning, we connected. There was this click. There was one time they threw a bowl with a bit of pasta, and I lost it, punching the wall, breaking my hand, and I started crying. Eli was there to hug me, it was a father's hug," Ohel recalled.

Sharabi told Ohel about his daughters, who were murdered by terrorists during the massacre, and burst into tears. They promised each other that they would survive for the sake of their family members waiting for them.

"Whoever was not there will not be able to understand our captivity. In your life, you have not experienced starvation, you have not been connected to chains for a year and a half, shackled like a monkey, and eating like a dog. You are not a human being, you are an animal," he said.

"We would eat pita and four spoons of peas a day. There was a period when we ate only dried dates. And you know they have food. You tell yourself, ‘In the end, you get used to hunger,’ but no. It’s pain in the whole body, all the time. You look like a skeleton. You look at yourself, and you see a corpse, and it makes them feel good in their heart," Ohel said, describing how he tried to stay strong mentally.

The IDF bombed the tunnel they were in and a missile blew up the mosque and school from which the tunnel shafts came out, Ohel said.

The hostages were sure they would be rescued and that IDF soldiers were entering the tunnels. "We went out and ran between the ruins," he said. "We heard machine guns, and we kept running until we reached another tunnel that had nothing."

Ohel recalled how a senior terrorist told them how the other hostages being held with Ohel were being released. They tore him from Sharabi, and he refused to leave. Both he and Sharabi were shaking, he recalled.

"I told Eli, 'Wow, I'm happy for you.' He said that everything will be okay."

Ohel recounted how, after eight months in captivity, he was relocated to the south of the Gaza Strip.

"Suddenly, we stopped," he said. "They took me out of the vehicle, and we started wandering in Gaza. In retrospect, I understood that they relocated me to create pressure on Israel."

After being moved, Ohel was united with fellow hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal. The two served together in the navy, and recognized each other immediately, Ohel recounted.

The two were taken into a tunnel and ordered by terrorists to write a letter to their families.

Izzadin al-Haddad, then-commander of Hamas's Gaza Brigade, who has since been promoted to head of the so-called military wing, the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades, came into the tunnel and told Ohel and Gilboa-Dalal that they were being released.

"From there, everything happened very quickly. A woman from the Red Cross took me and apologized. She was very embarrassed because the Red Cross didn't do anything. They're a disgraceful organization - no different from the UN," he affirmed.

From the window of the Red Cross vehicle, he saw IDF soldiers. He recalled how he noticed that they were reservists with families and children.

Ohel noted that he did not break down upon being reunited with his family. What was important to him was to give them the feeling that he returned sane, healthy, and whole, but then he allowed himself to show emotions.

When he learned that Sharabi lost his entire family, he broke down, he remembered.

"For two years, I was a dead person. I prayed that someone would save me, but I discovered that I am strong, I can do everything, I am not a victim, I am not looking for self-pity. I went through what I went through, and I take it and grow, continuing to learn and develop. I am going to conquer the world," Ohel concluded.