Iair Horn, who was freed from Hamas captivity in February amid a Gaza ceasefire arrangement, expressed deep uncertainty about the fate of his younger brother, Eitan Horn, who remains in captivity.
At a rally in Hostages Square commemorating 600 days since Hamas’s brutal October 7 attack, Horn described the paralyzing anxiety he lived with underground. “In the tunnels, you can’t know if a terrorist will get up one morning and just shoot you, or if the tunnel where you’re sleeping will be blown up because of a bomb,” he said.
He recalled one terrifying moment during an Israeli strike, when his captors forced them to flee. “They grabbed us and we started running in a totally crooked tunnel, which could collapse at any moment, trying to escape the bombing and toxic fumes.”
Horn then shared a searing memory involving his brother. “We run and run until Eitan sits, with all his 100 and something kilos… and tells me: ‘I’ve come this far. Leave me,’” he recounted. “I grabbed him by the arm and dragged him, dragged as much as I could, until my strength ran out.”
Faced with the grim reality, Horn told his brother: “‘If you don’t start moving, we’ll both die here.’”
“So he got up,” Horn continued. “Now I’m not there to drag him by the arm.”
He said that what saved them then was luck — but luck alone is no longer enough. “We were saved by luck, but the luck has run out,” he said. “Instead of luck, we need to sign off on an end to the war. Instead of luck, we need to bring back the 58 hostages, now — drag them out by the arm to a safe place back home.”
Horn made an emotional plea to Israeli leaders. “We can’t sacrifice anymore — enough,” he said. “Enlisted soldiers giving their body and soul — I’d rather they be on vacation. Brave, experienced reservists — I’d rather they took their kids to kindergarten every morning.”
Addressing Israel’s leader directly, Horn added, “So I address you, Israeli Prime Minister Binyomin Netanyahu. You brought me back home. Do it again.” His words were met with loud boos from the audience at the mention of the prime minister’s name.
Another former hostage, Ohad Ben Ami, who was freed alongside Yair Horn, spoke about the five men who were held with him in a Hamas tunnel — Yosef-Haim Ohana, Bar Kuperstein, Elkana Bohbot, Segev Kalfon, and Maxim Herkin — and who remain in captivity. “Everyone is still alive — with the operative word being ‘still,’” said Ben Ami.
Reflecting on footage Hamas released of them, Ben Ami said, “In the latest videos [published by Hamas] I saw them, but not like I knew them. The fear I saw in their eyes doesn’t leave me. Their physical condition is awful, their mental condition is still more awful.”
He described the day-to-day horrors they endured. “In the tunnels, we lived off of scraps, physically and emotionally, and while I’m here talking to you, they’re still there, breathing, but barely,” he said.
He closed with a somber call to action. “Don’t let them be forgotten,” he said. “Don’t let day 601 come as though nothing happened.”
As Ben Ami left the podium, the crowd erupted with a chant: “Hero!”
{Matzav.com Israel}