Hamas forced twelve-year-old captive to watch atrocities from October 7

Among other brutalities, Eitan Yahalomi and other children were threatened with guns every time one of them cried.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Stories of Hamas brutality towards their Israeli hostages are slowly coming out as the freed captives open up to their relatives about their experiences.

The aunt of 12-year-old Eitan Yahalomi, who was freed Monday night together with eight other children and two mothers, told French television that her nephew had to watch atrocities that his Hamas kidnappers had committed on October 7, when they abducted him and over 240 others from the Gaza envelope during their surprise attack in which they massacred 1,200 people.

“The Hamas terrorists forced him to watch films of the horrors, the kind that no one wants to see,” Devorah Cohen told BFMTV.

The terrorists posted some of their brutal acts online, and the IDF collected video evidence from the internet, captured GoPros the terrorists wore, and security cameras in the communities they invaded, of such crimes as burning whole families alive and beheading infants.

The clips were put together into a 47-minute video that Israel has shown to select journalists and legislators in several countries, including the U.S. and Great Britain, that deeply shook them.

In addition, she said that Yahalomi told her that “Every time one of the children started to cry, they would point a weapon at him to shut him up.”

“Maybe I’m naïve,” she said. “I really wanted to hope that he was getting treated humanely, but apparently that wasn’t the case. They are monsters.”

The civilians weren’t any better, according to Cohen. After he was forcibly taken from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on a moped into Gaza City, she said that “everyone hit him, including civilians. He is a 12-year-old child!”

Yahalomi’s father, Ohad, was shot and wounded in his attempt to save his family during the Hamas attack, and was also taken captive. He is still in Hamas’ hands, and his condition is unknown.

His mother, Batsheva, who had been thrown onto a different motorcycle together with her two younger daughters, one a toddler, managed to escape her captors with the children before they reached the border.

While hiding, two unarmed terrorists actually found them, but miraculously did not force them to go into Gaza with them.

The three eventually made their way to a part of the kibbutz where IDF soldiers found them and took them to safety.

Other released hostages have told of being fed very little food, being kept in the same clothes until the day they were freed, waiting long hours for the bathroom and not being given a chance to shower for the seven weeks of their captivity.