Freed Hostage Omer Wenkert Reveals Hamas Starved and Tortured Him ‘For Fun’

At a recent Israel Bar Association conference in Eilat, Omer Wenkert one of the hostages freed from Hamas captivity gave a harrowing account of the brutal treatment he endured at the hands of his captors in Gaza. His testimony offers a rare, firsthand look into the systematic cruelty faced by Israeli hostages, as the world continues to grapple with the consequences of Hamas’s barbarity.

“They deliberately starved us. The captors put my life in danger for fun,” Wenkert said. The young Israeli recounted how Hamas terrorists used chemical sprays on him, forced him into stress positions, and denied him basic nutrition for extended periods. At one point, a captor sprayed pest control chemicals directly into his face while forcing his eyes open.

Wenkert had access to a mirror only three times during his entire captivity. “I kept telling Guy and Eviatar, ‘I’m not that skinny,’” he recalled, referring to fellow hostages Gilboa Dalal and Eviatar David, who remain in Gaza. “They said that my bones were visible.” Both Gilboa Dalal and David are among 58 hostages still being held; only 20 are believed to be alive.

Survival in captivity, Wenkert explained, meant subsisting on nothing more than pita and rice. Occasionally, he received fava beans or a sliver of cheese, but “there were no vitamins, no minerals. Only simple carbs,” he said. “I can count on two fingers the times I ate anything that wasn’t empty carbs.”

Conditions worsened significantly during Israel’s Rafah operation in 2024. Underground temperatures soared, oxygen was scarce, and the feeling of time itself began to blur. “There is no air, it is hard to breathe,” Wenkert said. “You don’t really feel winter or summer.”

The effects of his ordeal were immediately visible to his family. “It was difficult to see him so thin, but the paleness was the hardest,” said his mother, Niva. “The eyes told us everything, and the body bore witness to the abuse.”

Wenkert’s revelations serve as a chilling reminder of the cruelty that continues to unfold in Hamas’s captivity. As the global community debates the humanitarian situation in Gaza, his voice stands as undeniable evidence of the inhumanity inflicted on innocent Israelis.

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