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In an interview with FRANCE 24, Israeli former hostage Shoshan Haran said "we were naive" about Hamas before the October 7, 2023 attack on her kibbutz. Held in Gaza for 50 days, she recalled refusing to "show weakness" to her captors. She also called the accusations of genocide against Israel "a lie" and shared her late husband's last words.
Shoshan Haran, an agronomist and founder of the NGO Fair Planet, was taken hostage by Hamas from her home in Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7, 2023. Speaking from Durham, North Carolina, as her memoir "Mission in Captivity" comes out in English, she looked back on the community's ties with Gaza. People from the enclave worked in the kibbutz, and many of its residents drove sick children from Gaza to Israeli hospitals.
"First of all, we were naive," Haran said. "We didn't really believe that they want to kill us all. Although they were explicit about it." She went on: "When I say they, I mean Hamas, with their declarations and their speeches and their writings." Asked about the accusations of genocide and possible war crimes levelled against Israel by many people around the world over the devastation in Gaza, Haran said: "The claim of genocide is a lie.
It is a war, a very cruel war." Read moreIsrael warns Gazans will pay 'heavy price' for any October 7 attacks on military Held for 50 days with her daughter, her sister-in-law and their children, Haran said she quickly understood she was "on a mission" as "the liaison between my family and the captors". From reading books by Holocaust survivors, she had retained one lesson –"not to show weakness". "By body language and eye contact, I was able to kind of demand respect," she told us.
It was only upon her release on November 25, 2023, that Haran learned that her husband Avshalom and her sister had not been abducted but murdered on October 7. Her son-in-law Tal, held for 505 days in Gaza tunnels, later told her Avshalom's last words: "It was a pleasure to live." Now rebuilding her life in another kibbutz, Haran said she is "missing my husband every day. Every minute, every second".
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