Freed Israeli Hostage Recalls Joy of Rescue, Depression in Captivity

By Shira Rubin / The Washington Post

14:51 JST, July 13, 2024

RAMAT GAN, Israel – Andrey Kozlov woke up on the morning of June 8 preparing to endure another day in Hamas captivity. But by the afternoon, he had been whisked out of Gaza, rescued by undercover Israeli commandos after eight months of war.

“Andrey! You’re going with me!” an Israeli soldier shouted as he entered the apartment in the Nuseirat refugee camp where Kozlov was held.

Now he is back in Israel with his family, struggling to make sense of the ordeal and advocating for other hostages still languishing in Gaza. “I understand I was a really lucky guy,” he said, adding that even as he recalled his experience, it felt distant. “I feel I am healthy, but some emotions are locked.”

The rescue operation, carried out in a crowded neighborhood in broad daylight, was one of the deadliest and most dramatic of the war. Thousands of Israeli troops trained for months for the mission to save Kozlov, 27, and three other hostages: Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Jan and Noa Argamani.

But when the raid was underway and their getaway car stalled, a fierce battle with Hamas fighters broke out. Israeli warplanes pummeled the camp so they could escape. The bombardment left more than 270 Palestinians dead, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, which does not distinguish between civilians and combatants but says the majority of those killed in the war are women and children.

Kozlov said he laughed and cried after boarding the helicopter that would take them home, watching through the window as Gaza’s sandy beaches, concrete buildings and sprawling tent cities disappeared over the horizon.

“Real superheroes,” Kozlov said of the troops who rescued him, in an interview at a hotel in Ramat Gan in central Israel, where he is now living with his mother and brother.

The commandos were euphoric, he said, flashing bright smiles and shaking the hostages’ hands. “It was wow, wow,” Kozlov said, adding that he felt like he was in “the main role” of an “incredible film.”

But after the first few days of freedom, as the euphoria and adrenaline faded, he started wrestling with the series of events that caused him to end up in a refugee camp in Gaza.

It all started on Oct. 7 when Kozlov, a recent immigrant from Russia, was working security at a music festival near the border. His Hebrew was still rudimentary and as Hamas fighters began to attack, he struggled to follow what was going on.

All he could make out, he said, was b’hatzlacha, or good luck, a phrase the partygoers shouted at each other as they ran for their lives. Kozlov also ran, searching for shelter in the open desert. He joined Ziv, another security guard, and they fled until a man in a T-shirt and jeans approached them, saying, “come, come.”

Kozlov breathed a sigh of relief and thanked the man, thinking they were about to be saved. Then another man with a beard, fatigues and a Kalashnikov rifle appeared from behind a tree. He shuffled the two Israelis into a Toyota Lexus. Kozlov remembers thinking that the men must be members of an Israeli undercover unit.

But when he asked the man with a beard if he had another gun, so that Kozlov could help kill the militants advancing through the music festival, everyone in the car looked at him in utter disbelief. He soon realized that they were headed to Gaza, the Palestinian enclave controlled by Hamas.

Once there, they were chained and blindfolded and grouped together with Almog Meir Jan, also abducted from the festival. “It was really scary,” Kozlov said. “We were us three, with the guard, who didn’t talk. On one side, was a big stick. On the other side, a big knife.”

On one of the first days, a guard removed Kozlov’s blindfold and said through gestures and in Arabic: “I – tomorrow – you – film – kill you.”

“I thought that would be the end of my story,” he said.

But the next day, the guards swapped their metal chains with rope and the same guard approached, with a new message: “I – love – you.”

“What? Are you crazy?” Kozlov recalls thinking. “What are you doing? What’s going on?”

Over the course of the next eight months, the three men were moved to seven different homes, some with Palestinian families and others in abandoned buildings. The rotating guards occasionally brought them food or packs of cards. They asked questions in broken English and boasted about the high death toll on Oct. 7. Israel estimates around 1,200 people were killed in the attack. More than 250 others were dragged back into Gaza as hostages.

The guards also told their captives that Israel had given up on them, saying Kozlov’s mother was vacationing abroad and Ziv’s wife was dating other men. In general, they seemed incapable of comprehending the hostages’ suffering, Kozlov said.

One day when the hostages were visibly upset, the guards asked what was wrong.

“I don’t see sun, I don’t see nothing, I only see you guys,” Kozlov responded. “Maybe you will kill us in one hour. And you ask, why so sad? Because of this. Because of all of this that you did.”

Early in the war, during a brief cease-fire in November, there was some hope among the hostages that they would be included in the release. Hamas transferred 105 captives to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which transported them back to Israel. Israeli authorities also released 240 Palestinian detainees.

But when the bombings resumed, Kozlov and his fellow captives knew they wouldn’t be going home and entered “the deepest depression,” he said.

It was in December when a guard who called himself Mohammad brought them to the home in Nuseirat, where they would stay for the next six months. The apartment belonged to the Aljamal family, according to the Israeli military.

And Mohammad was actually Abdallah Aljamal, an editor at the Palestine Now news agency, according to the Hamas-run government media office in Gaza. He was also a freelance contributor to the Palestine Chronicle, a website operated by a U.S. nonprofit. Earlier this week, Jan filed a lawsuit in U.S. federal court alleging the organization paid Aljamal while he held the three hostages captive.

The Israeli military later described him as a Hamas “operative.” He was killed with his wife and father during the raid.

At the beginning, Aljamal joked and played cards with the hostages. But as time passed, his mood darkened. He confined himself to the cramped room where they were held, Kozlov said, and his punishments became “really creative.”

One day in May, Kozlov mistakenly used a few drops of drinking water to wash his hands. Aljamal became enraged and ordered Kozlov to lie down on a mattress, he said. He then forced Ziv and Jan to help him cover Kozlov with several thick blankets, making him stay there for more than an hour in 90-degree weather.

Kozlov’s mother, Evgeniia, said that she heard testimonies from other hostages describing physical, psychological and sexual torture, and worried that her son would return to her broken.

“I was very afraid to see what person returned to me,” she said. “But I saw in a few minutes that he is my Andrey. He didn’t change.”

Kozlov said that his time in captivity taught him to survive. In the early months, he cried often.

“But with time, human beings, their tears run out,” he said. “I spent all of my emotion.”