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Freed hostage Doron Steinbrecher recalls a terrorist bullet nearly missed her head while she hid

Steinbrecher: “In captivity, I had no hope, but in the end, I came back … There can’t be a reality where they don’t come back. It doesn’t make sense.”

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Freed hostage Doron Steinbrecher shared the chilling story of her abduction on October 7th and how she narrowly missed getting shot in the head before she was kidnapped from her home in Kfar Aza.

In a candid interview with Yedioth Ahronot, Steinbrecher recalls that morning when she heard gunfire in the kibbutz and immediately hid under the bed.

She vividly recalled the sounds of the terrorists, their footsteps, shouting in Arabic, then the crash of breaking glass.

While speaking to her mother on the phone, she heard them shout, “Iftah al-Bab!”—“Open the door!” Then she realized they had broken a window.

Moments later, a terrorist entered the bedroom and scanned the room. He initially believed it was empty. But suspicion returned when they noticed the refrigerator had been pushed against the door.

He fired a shot at the bed, narrowly missing her. Then they lifted the mattress. There was nowhere left to hide.

With her hands raised in a gesture of surrender, four armed terrorists pulled Steinbrecher away from her home.

“They grabbed my hand, put me on a shelf, and we exited through the window,” she recalled.

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Outside, fear gripped her as she realized she was being taken to Gaza. She tried to resist, to buy time, to hope that someone would intervene, but no one came.

“On the way to Gaza, I simply switched off in my mind,” she said. “I shut myself down and said, ‘Alright, there’s nothing you can do about this … just survive.’”

Now free, Steinbrecher remains haunted by the experience but determined to speak out. Reflecting on those still held captive, she urged action on releasing the hostages and recalled her own feelings of hopelessness.

“In captivity, I had no hope, but in the end, I came back … There can’t be a reality where they don’t come back. It doesn’t make sense.”