Former hostage Eitan Mor said that he encountered Izz al-Din al-Haddad, the current leader of Hamas's military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, during captivity in Gaza in a Friday interview with the Israeli newspaper Makor Rishon.
Mor recalled the Hamas leader telling him in the early days of his captivity that he would be released within two weeks. However, he was released after two years in October 2025.
Eitan Mor's kidnapping on October 7
Mor was working as a security guard at the Nova Music Festival when Hamas invaded. He explained how "the terrorists had taken over all the main roads, but to the right of the square, there was a dirt road through which it was still possible to escape."
"On the way, we had already seen many bodies. We hid, and I called my uncle and asked him to call the army. Helicopters flew over us; we tried to wave them towards us, but they continued on," he added.
Mor described how he told Nova attendees not to head back to the scene of the party.
Despite the emergency situation, Mor explained how he and his friends hid the murdered bodies of young women, fearful of what the terrorists would do to them.
"Some (of the murdered women) were already half-dressed, and I don't know what else they would do with them," he explained. Together with fellow former hostage Rom Braslavski, he hid the body of the late 23-year-old Shira Eylon. Her body was later discovered in a forest near the festival.
"Then we came to take another person, who had been severely abused, but we didn't have time," he continued.
Five terrorists grabbed Braslavski, and two grabbed Mor, though he was able to briefly escape their clutches after punching one of them. Despite his efforts to escape, he was apprehended by a group of Palestinians, some of them still children, who joined the invasion.
“They had knives, saws, hammers. And all of them were beating me up, with everything they had. They held a knife to me, and I was sure I was going to die now,” he recounted. “Then the biggest one of them said to me in English, 'Either you die now or come with us to Gaza.' I said, 'To Gaza.'”
After robbing him of his phone and necklace and stripping him of his shirt, the group of Palestinians hailed down a vehicle being driven by Hamas and told the terrorists to take him to Gaza. In the car, they forced him to take photos as they chanted “Allahu Akhbar” and beat him.
Eitan Mor's time in Gaza captivity
"They beat me up, but I was still on adrenaline from all the hours before, so I didn't feel the pain,” Mor said.
“People wrote on Facebook in the comments to this photo that it didn't make sense. How is he so calm? Maybe this was a staged kidnapping. But the truth is, right in those moments, I got it into my head that this is the situation now, and I'm probably going to die, or they'll cut off my hands, or I don't know what Hamas will do to me there. I prepared myself for the worst. So I took a few deep breaths to calm down, and just waited to see how much s*** I was going to eat.“
After entering Gaza, Mor described the crowds of Gazans eagerly making way for the terrorists transporting him.
After being taken to an office in the direction of Beit Hanoun, Mor described how he asked a terrorist for a cigarette, despite having given up smoking years earlier, as he believed he was going to die anyway.
While smoking the cigarette, the mother of the terrorist who handed him the tobacco arrived and began yelling at him, “You took our land, all the Jews took our land. You expelled us from our places.”
Answering the woman, “Listen, I didn't take anyone's land. What do you want from me?” he described how taken aback he was when she then offered him coffee.
“They dressed me like a Gazan, put a hat on me. After about an hour, a gray jeep arrived and took me to a place near the Indonesian hospital,” he recounted. “Two Hamas members get into the car, one of them curses at me, and I don't understand what he wants. And I dry off in the car, and it's hot. I didn't understand Arabic at the time…
“I remember seeing some papers in the car. I asked him in English if I could take some. He looked at me strangely and said, ‘Yes.’ I made a frog out of folded paper. It calmed me down a bit to be busy with something with my hands. All I could think was that all my friends must have died. I thought then that I was the only one kidnapped.”
Haddad arrived near the hospital an hour later. "He was wearing a hat and started talking to me in Hebrew. He said, 'Don't worry, you'll be out of here in two weeks.' He took details from me, my name, my father's name, an ID card, my phone number, my father's," Mor recounted.
That was the first of several encounters Mor would share with the senior terrorist.
After the brief encounter, Mor was transported to a warehouse where he was left with his hands tied behind his back for a week.
“They looked at us like monkeys there. They're not used to seeing a Jew, or anyone outside of Gaza in general,” Mor explained.
“There were three difficult days with my hands behind my back. I couldn't sleep, I couldn't lie down, nothing,” he said.
“After three days, there was someone with a little more compassion. I told him I couldn't do it like that, and he made a hole in the wall and tied me there with one hand. That way I could lie down properly.”
Despite meeting a slightly more compassionate terrorist on his third day, Mor described the brutality he experienced in the days that followed. Another terrorist arrived and stole his expensive shoes before using electrocution to torture him, Mor explained. Days later, the terrorists eventually gave him cheaper shoes, many sizes too large.
The situation became more frightening once Israel began its military response to the massacre, Mor said. Still, he described the mixed feelings he had at hearing the Israeli bombing throughout the night.
"The truth is, I was happy because the bombings at the beginning of the war were very intense. Five brigades came to Gaza City. Massive military pressure. It's very scary….For example, when you sit at night, and the army is taking down buildings around you, you're just waiting to die," he said. “The Hamas members are also dying of fear, but they're less afraid of death. From their perspective, sitting with hostages is a great job. They get food and a place to be."
A month into captivity, Mor was moved underground, where he would later meet Ziv Berman, another hostage taken from southern Israel.
With little else to do, Mor also took up learning Arabic from his captors and became fluent after a year.
“They liked to explain how well they, as Muslims, treat prisoners, compared to [National Security Minister Itamar] Ben-Gvir, who treats prisoners badly,” he shared. “I tried to explain to them once that we have murderers in prison. I said it once and stopped, because it wasn't wise to say it in front of them.
“I learned their manners, what greetings you give when someone sneezes, what you say to someone who serves you food or a cup of tea. Once I spoke Arabic quite fluently, with an accent, and knew the vernacular words, I saw that they connected more. It helped me a lot,” he later added.
The terrorists told him to clean and cook, though the food he was provided was infested with worms, he said. He was unable to shower for weeks at a time, and the hygiene conditions in the tunnel were poor.
“Being there is essentially coming to terms with death,” Mor described. “I've tried to compare myself sometimes to a soldier who goes to fight. All our soldiers are heroes. But it's not the same thing. A soldier has the ability to defend himself. Ziv and I talked about it, that we're just sitting there, can't escape, and we're helpless."
Despite fantasizing about escape, Mor said he knew it was ultimately futile. “Even if you take a weapon, shoot someone, and go out, the whole neighborhood will be on you. They'll kill you in your slippers," he said.
The food rations given to them slowly decreased in the tunnels, Mor said. On some days, he had only a plate of rice to share among five people, and on others, only a “kiddush cup”- size portion of beans.
After Operation Arnon, conditions became harsher, but again, Haddad met with the hostages.
“At some point, Haddad also arrived there. The truth is that he is a smart man, an intellectual. He studied the enemy, us, properly. He talked to us, among other things, about how they planned October 7, and showed a very broad knowledge of everything related to the army,” Mor described.
“I admit that he knows better than I do, and I think more than most IDF soldiers, about the army. They are obsessed with us. They know a lot. I wish our security establishment would be as obsessed with them from now on as they are with us."
Mor’s father’s role in the Tikva Forum was also widely discussed among the terrorists, though they didn’t let Mor watch his father’s interviews.
“I salute my father. I admire him. Wow, my father is a strong guy. He tells the truth to his face in a respectful manner. He thinks about the country before he thinks about himself. And I want to thank him for being strong for the whole family and for me,” Mor shared.