During a debate organized last June in Los Angeles, a remarkable sequence featured Moran Stela Yanai, a survivor of the October 7 attack, facing Aidan Dewolf, a pro-Palestinian activist and organizer of a protest camp. at UCLA. The video of this confrontation, published recently, quickly went around social networks. “I really want to talk to you eye to eye and tell you a story,” Yanai tells his interlocutor. This 40-year-old jewelry designer, who was participating in the Nova festival near Kibbutz Re’im to sell her creations, was kidnapped by Hamas and held captive for 54 days in the Gaza Strip.
Faced with the visibly uncomfortable activist, she details her ordeal: “I was captured three times. The last time, I was in the hands of 13 Hamas terrorists.” She goes on to reveal the attackers’ intentions: “They told me they didn’t even know there were 3,000 people at the Nova festival. They were planning to go ahead and kill as many people as possible in Beersheba. , Tel Aviv, Haifa – they wanted to massacre everything.”
Yanai also recounts how her family found out about her kidnapping: “My mother learned that I had been kidnapped by my 12-year-old niece, who recognized me from a video on TikTok.” During her captivity, she endured particularly harsh conditions, forced to beg for food and forced to look her captors in the eyes, an experience that left her deeply psychologically scarred.
Released in January 2024, Yanai returned to live in Beersheba. She has since continued to testify to raise public awareness of the fate of the hostages still detained and to encourage mobilization in their favor.
Canada
