“They pointed a gun at me and held a grenade over my head,” Rahel Edri said. Photo by Screenshot from Israeli Channel 13/Reshet

This article originally appeared on Haaretz, and was reprinted here with permission. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.

An Israeli woman held hostage with her husband in their home for 20 hours recounted the ordeal to the media on Monday, saying she bought time by serving her Hamas captors drinks and joking around with them.

The attack began after a rocket siren that made them head toward their bomb shelter in their Ofakim home, Rahel Edri told the Walla news site.

Five men broke their windows, claiming to be the police but largely speaking Arabic. The men forced her upstairs, broke her and her husband’s phones, asked them questions, and rummaged through the closets.

“They pointed a gun at me and held a grenade over my head,” Edri told Walla. “I told him I had to inject insulin, trying to distract them from the fact I have children who are police officers… I offered them drinks: Coke Zero, water.”

The attackers told Edri that they were heroes and that their children supported their actions. They would check the windows to ensure no one was coming to rescue the hostages.

Edri said she joked with the attackers in a bid to buy time for rescue forces to arrive. “I said, ‘I’ll teach you Hebrew, and you’ll teach me Arabic,'” she said. “I understood that it was a matter of life and death.”

“Suddenly, around midnight, we heard the special forces entering,” she said, and she became anxious that they would accidentally shoot at her. “Instead of killing us, the terrorists ran to various locations and hid until they were shot at. I want to thank the police. They are our heroes.”

אופקים: שוטרים מול מחבלים pic.twitter.com/Ey10lgSBom

— הדיגיטאלית (@LTurkishdizi) October 7, 2023

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

$90 $180

$360

Other amount