JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) — Tears streamed down the faces of some of the hundreds of people gathered in a synagogue in Johannesburg as Or Levy described his release earlier this year after 491 days as a hostage of Hamas.

Levy was brought to South Africa by the local branch of the Jewish National Fund (JNF), a state-linked Israeli organization.

Since Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023, South Africa has been among the countries most antagonistic toward Israel. In December 2023, the South African government took Israel to the International Court of Justice, charging that Israel’s military campaign against Hamas in Gaza was an act of genocide.

Since May 2024, local Jewish groups have organized at least 16 similar events with former captives, survivors or families of victims of the terror group’s October 7 attack.

Levy’s release in February was “simultaneously the best and worst day of my life,” said the 30-something, still gaunt six months later.

It was the day he learned that his wife had been among more than 360 people killed in Hamas’s attack on the Nova music festival, in which he was among 40 people kidnapped to the Strip.

It was also when he was reunited with his four-year-old son.

“He just told me: ‘Mom is dead.’ I know, it’s the hardest sentence to hear from a child,” said Levy to the weeping audience, a yellow ribbon pinned to his suit in honor of those still in captivity.

The attack on the festival was only one part of a Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel that resulted in the deaths of some 1,200 people and the kidnapping of 251 hostages.

The Hamas-run Gaza health ministry says more than 62,000 people in the Strip have been killed or are presumed dead in the resulting fighting so far, though the toll cannot be verified and does not differentiate between civilians and fighters. Israel says it has killed over 22,000 combatants in battle as of August and another 1,600 terrorists inside Israel during and immediately following the October 7 onslaught.

Levy was visiting South Africa after a similar four-week tour in the United States.

The public talks are “kind of therapeutic for me,” Levy told AFP after his hour-long address. “It’s hard, but it helps.”

“I can tell you that in 2024, I only saw the sunlight once,” he recounted to his mostly elderly audience of about 500 people.

That was in January of that year, when the tunnel in which he was being held was bombed and everyone fled outside, and he was made to return 30 minutes later.

He was treated “like a dog,” he said, fed once a day — usually a pita bread and two cans of food for four people — and losing 20 kilograms (44 pounds).

“We were shackled for the entire time,” he said. The ties were only loosened for short showers, around every two months.

For audience member Diane Wolfson, Levy’s testimony was the most moving yet. “The more I hear, the harder it gets,” she said.

“For me, the main mission is to bring everyone back,” Levy told AFP. “I think that everyone needs to hear what I’ve been through and what others are still going through.”

South Africa is home to around 50,000 Jews, according to local estimates, and the Jewish community has produced admired stalwarts of the fight against apartheid, including Nelson Mandela’s ally Joe Slovo and lawyer and judge Albie Sachs.

The initiative has been criticized by local anti-Israel activists.

The groups bringing through survivors of the 2023 attack “are desperately trying to stop the hemorrhaging support for the genocide in the Jewish community,” said Rina King from the South African Jews for a Free Palestine (SAJFP).

It is an attempt to “counter the dominant narrative” of the Israel-Hamas conflict by focusing on the terrorists’ actions and “presenting themselves as victims,” she said.

“More and more” Jews are supporting SAJFP, she claimed to AFP.

Israel rejects accusations that it is committing genocide in Gaza, insists it makes every effort to avoid harming civilians and blames Hamas for their deaths because the terror group’s fighters operate out of densely populated areas.

The JNF is organizing a similar visit to Australia by fellow former hostage Eli Sharabi, who was held in the same tunnel as Levy. There have been others in countries like Britain and Canada.

Ahead of Levy’s address, the Israeli embassy deputy head of mission, Ariel Seidman — the most senior Israeli diplomat in South Africa since the ambassador was recalled in 2023 — said to the audience: “What we need is unity.”

The former hostage told AFP his trip to South Africa was more important than going to countries that were in full support of his cause and where he would be merely “preaching to the choir.”