Judith Raanan, who was kidnapped together with her daughter on October 7 and freed 13 days later, shares her experience in TV interview.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/386718
Judith Raanan, a Chicago-area resident who was kidnapped together with her daughter, Natalie, by Hamas during its October 7 attack on Israel, said her captors were greeted as heroes when she and her daughter arrived at a Gaza hospital.
“The minute we came in, all the nurses were standing there and going like this [cheering]. They were all so happy that they came back with prey, with Israeli-Jewish prey,” Raanan told NewsNation in an interview on Wednesday.
Judith and Natalie Raanan were the first hostages to be freed by Hamas. They were released on October 20, after nearly two weeks in captivity.
At the hospital, Raanan said she interacted with a man she believed to be a “very high-ranked” Hamas leader who spoke “brilliant Hebrew.”
The two were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7. Raanan said she and her daughter had been sleeping when they received a phone call warning them not to go outside.
“I started walking towards the room of my daughter, and that was also the moment that a rocket hit the bedroom where I was,” Raanan recalled.
Realizing an attack was underway, Raanan explained to her daughter what was happening.
“I simply said, ‘Honey, do you remember how you’ve seen the movies? Those guys that have all this military artillery and stuff that come with guns and all? That’s what’s going to come through the door, so don’t panic.'”
Raanan recalled armed terrorists bursting into the room while she and Natalie were still in their pajamas.
“My girl was afraid. She said, ‘Mom, I’m afraid to be raped.’ I said nobody’s going to do nothing to you,” Raanan said.
The terrorists held the two at gunpoint and ordered them to convince neighbors to leave the safe rooms where they were hiding, she recalled.
“He’s telling me, ‘You tell them to get out, you tell them to get out, or I’m going to bomb the whole building,'” said Raanan.
The terrorists rounded up the hostages they’d managed to capture and marched them, zip-tied and at gunpoint, through the desert to the Gaza border, Raanan continued, adding she was badly cut when one of the terrorists removed her restraint with a sharp knife.
