When the Gaza sunshine was at its hottest, Andrey Kozlov said the Hamas fighters would cover him with blankets, leaving him to stew in his sweat. When he asked about his family, they would say they had forgotten him. When they pulled the blindfold from his eyes, they said they would kill him and film his murder. <\/p>\n
The 27-year-old said he suffered intense psychological \u2013 and some physical \u2013 abuse at the hands of Hamas. He cannot bring himself to describe all that happened to him and the two other hostages he was kept with during his eight months of captivity in Gaza. <\/p>\n
After being snatched from the Nova music festival on October 7, Kozlov, a Russian-Israeli citizen, said he was tied up for \u201cthree days with rope, then until the middle of December with chains.\u201d During these months he was subjected to \u201ccreative\u201d forms of punishment: One guard \u201ctold us a lot that Israel wants to kill us\u201d and that they were a problem from which Israel was trying to rid itself. <\/p>\n
Kozlov strove not to believe the lies, he said, but the result was that, when Israeli soldiers last month burst into the building in which he was being held, he thought they had been sent to kill him. <\/p>\n
Instead, it was a stunning rescue operation that brought him and the two others home \u2013 as well as Noa Argamani, who was held in a nearby building. But it left in its wake a trail of destruction: Gaza authorities say at least 274 Palestinians were killed in the raid and the ensuing firefight with Hamas militants. <\/p>\n
Kozlov was nearing the end of his shift as a security guard at the Nova festival when Hamas fighters began to pour over the border. He had moved from Russia to Israel two years earlier, and taken the job because it was \u201ceasy money.\u201d When he clocked off, Kozlov thought \u201cI will come back home, I will sleep and everything will be good. But no, it didn\u2019t happen.\u201d <\/p>\n
Minutes later, he was sprinting through a forest with \u201cmaybe 200, 300 people,\u201d panicked by the sound of gunshots and a stream of gruesome nearby videos that had already emerged online. But as they stumbled out into a field, Kozlov saw \u2013 he recalled in broken English \u2013 \u201ca car full of guys in green uniform. And they shoot in the air, they shoot already on us.\u201d <\/p>\n
Hiding in the bushes was no help. He was swiftly found and taken to Gaza, where he was held in several different places with Almog Meir Jan and Shlomi Ziv, before their eventual rescue in Nuseirat, in the center of the enclave. <\/p>\n
On his first day, his captor \u201ctook the fabric from my eyes and showed me with signs\u201d what he was planning to do. The man pointed to himself \u2013 \u201cI\u201d \u2013 then tapped his watch \u2013 \u201ctomorrow\u201d \u2013 then pointed to Kozlov \u2013 \u201cyou\u201d \u2013 then made a camera sign, clicking its shutter \u2013 \u201cfilm\u201d \u2013 then made a gun with his fingers, pulling the trigger \u2013 \u201ckill.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kozlov said he thought that day would be his last, but \u2013 as the hours passed \u2013 that fear slowly subsided. Days later, he said he understood \u201cthat probably they\u2019re not gonna kill us.\u201d Using signs again, they explained to Kozlov that they wanted to swap him: \u201cYou\u2019re going to Israel, our people go to Gaza and the West Bank.\u201d <\/p>\n
For the first three months, the sound of Israeli bombing was constant, Kozlov said: \u201cWe were afraid of every bomb that we heard. Every time you started to hide in the corners of our room.\u201d His captors laughed, he said, asking what they were afraid of. <\/p>\n
They were moved between houses several times, Kozlov said, with some places giving them enough food. After being unchained in December, some places where he was held gave him the chance to exercise \u2013 \u201csquats, pushups\u201d and the like. <\/p>\n
But he was exposed to prolonged psychological abuse, he said, by guards watching over them wearing masks, holding Kalashnikovs and a \u201cbig knife.\u201d The main guard, he said, had a \u201csplit\u201d personality and often \u201cgot crazy.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cHe has two personalities,\u201d Kozlov said. \u201cHe told us: \u2018I have two faces: A good one, but I don\u2019t want you to see the second face \u2013 like, I can kill you.\u201d <\/p>\n
Some mornings, the guard would be friendly, offering to play cards with them. But in other mornings Kozlov would \u201cwake up and you understand \u2013 ah, the second face. You don\u2019t talk with him at all.\u201d <\/p>\n
Kozlov would be punished for arbitrary things, he said. Once, after washing his hands with drinking water before eating, the guard \u201cnoticed and he said, \u2018I told you not to do this, yes?\u2019\u201d The guard had someone cover Kozlov with \u201creally thick blankets, in the middle of May,\u201d and leave him in the heat for an hour and a half. <\/p>\n
Kozlov\u2019s testimony chimes with that of other rescued hostages. The doctor in charge of medical treatment for Kozlov and the three others rescued in the Israeli operation said they were beaten and described their captivity as a \u201charsh, harsh experience, with a lot of abuse, almost every day.\u201d <\/p>\n
Still, Kozlov considers himself \u201clucky.\u201d He said he saw other hostages during his eight months in Gaza, \u201cbut I don\u2019t want to talk about it\u2026 It\u2019s painful and it\u2019s gonna be dangerous for them,\u201d he said. Were they in worse shape than him? \u201cYes they were.\u201d <\/p>\n
For that reason, Kozlov implored Israeli officials to \u201ctry to understand how we [the hostages] felt all this time. We need to bring them home as soon as possible. I don\u2019t know how. But we need to do this immediately.\u201d <\/p>\n
Talks resumed in the Qatari capital Doha last Friday. Over the weekend, Hamas agreed to compromise on a major sticking point for Israel \u2013 that Netanyahu\u2019s government commits to a permanent ceasefire in Gaza before signing an agreement. But a statement from Netanyahu\u2019s office on Sunday cast doubt on the deal, laying out several \u201cprinciples\u201d Israel is not prepared to abandon, including resumed fighting in Gaza \u201cuntil all objectives of the war have been achieved.\u201d <\/p>\n
For Kozlov, the days he was captured \u2013 and rescued \u2013 have become landmarks in his life. October 7 became his second \u201cbirthday;\u201d June 18, his third. He wants the 120 remaining hostages to be able to mark their own dates. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When the Gaza sunshine was at its hottest, Andrey Kozlov said the Hamas fighters would…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5336,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5336"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailywashingtoninsider.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}