Roni Krivoi, 25, managed to escape from terrorists who held him hostage in the Gaza Strip, but ordinary Gazans returned him to his captors, his aunt said on Monday.
The revelation, which followed Hamas's release of Krivoi on Sunday along with 13 other Israeli hostages, was the latest evidence that ordinary Palestinians have enabled Hamas's terrorism against Israel during and since the Oct. 7 attack.
Krivoi was working as a sound technician at the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7 when Gazan terrorists stormed the event as part of a rampage through southern Israel in which they killed more than 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducted 245 others. Krivoi's aunt, Elena Magid, told Israel's Kan public radio station that her nephew managed to escape when Israeli airstrikes collapsed a residential building where he was being held. He was free in Gaza for four days before the ordinary Gazans caught him and brought him back to captivity, she said.
"He tried to reach the border, but I think because he didn’t have the means to understand where he was and where to escape to, he got tangled up in the area," according to Magid, who said she spoke to Krivoi on the phone for 30 minutes following his release.
"I asked him, ‘How do you feel? Do you have nightmares at night?’ He told me, ‘Listen, I have nightmares, but everything is alright.’"
Magid said that Krivoi had received stitches in his head but was overall in good physical condition.
Krivoi's immediate family, Russian-Israelis who live in Karmiel, declined through a representative to comment on Magid's account or to be interviewed at the moment, saying, "they need time to breathe and to think."
Hamas released Krivoi as a gesture to Russian president Vladimir Putin, not as part of a four-day truce agreement with Israel.
The Washington Free Beacon has reported that hundreds of ordinary Gazans joined in Hamas's atrocities on Oct. 7, and women and children as young as 10 years old helped. Videos show Gazans celebrated in the streets as terrorists returned with Israeli hostages on Oct. 7, including the half-naked body of a 22-year-old woman. A poll by the Arab World for Research and Development, released earlier this month, found that 60 percent of Gazans feel positively about Hamas and 64 percent support the group's Oct. 7 attack.
In the West Bank, those numbers were event higher: 87 percent and 83 percent, respectively. Also in the West Bank, Palestinian officials have downplayed or endorsed the Oct. 7 attack, and pro-Hamas crowds have celebrated the return of terrorists released by Israel in exchange for the hostages.
Hamas was slated to release another round of Israeli hostages on Monday night—reportedly of nine children and two of their mothers—as part of a four-day truce agreement with Israel. Since Friday, Hamas has released 39 Israeli women and children in exchange for Israel's release of 120 Palestinian prisoners and pause of its war to destroy the terrorist group. Qatar announced on Monday, and the White House confirmed, that Israel and Hamas had agreed to extend the deal for two more days, meaning 20 more Israeli hostages and 60 more Palestinian prisoners would be released.