A hostage who along with his brother-in-law was rescued from Hamas captivity recalled to Israeli television the daring IDF operation last month that saved them, and gave details on his life back in Israel after 129 days as an abductee.

In an interview with Channel 12 news aired Tuesday, Louis Har, 70, described the initial moments when members of the Shin Bet security agency and the police’s elite Yamam counterterrorism unit used explosives to breach the second-floor apartment in Rafah where he and Fernando Marman, 61, were being held and killed three terrorists guarding them.

“It’s a matter of seconds. Suddenly, there was an explosion. The first thought was that the building was being bombed by the Israel Defense Forces. I rolled off the mattress where I was sleeping in the direction of the terrorists,” Har said.

Har described non-stop shooting in every direction the likes of which he he had not seen “even in movies.”

“Suddenly they yelled: ‘Louis, over here!’ Someone grabbed my leg and said ‘IDF! IDF! We came to take you home,’” he recounted, saying the Israeli security forces protected them with their bodies as the battle went on.

“It was insanity.”

Har and Marman were hustled into armored vehicles to a makeshift helipad deep inside Gaza, then transferred to a military helicopter that brought them to Israel.

“I asked the soldier sitting next to me: Are you sure we are not in a movie? I really had to pinch myself to make sure I was awake, that it wasn’t another one of my dreams,” he said.

Har was taken hostage from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak to Gaza by Hamas terrorists on October 7, along with Har’s partner, Clara Marman, 62, Clara’s brother Fernando, sister Gabriela Leimberg, 59 and Gabriela’s daughter, Mia Leimberg, 17.

They were held together in a small, dark apartment until the women and teenager were released after 52 days as hostages, as part of a weeklong truce in November that saw the overall release of 105 abductees.

Har said he and Marman were told their release was imminent but quickly understood, as the bombings persisted, that they may have longer to wait.

The days passed “very slowly,” he said, recalling that they told each other stories to pass the time.

“I know Nando [Fernando] more than anyone else because I’ve never been with anyone so closely like that, 129 days,” he said. “We argued, we even laughed at ourselves.”

“We made sure the other didn’t break,” he said, describing that the two had moments where they cried.

There was no TV or radio and they ate one pita per day, sometimes with an onion or tomato if these were available, according to the report.

“We did what we could to survive,” he told the interviewer, later saying he didn’t think he would get out of there alive.

Har said his captors often told them that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was not interested in a deal to release the remaining hostages and that he preferred them dead. He said the terrorists went into detail about the tragic, mistaken killing of three hostages by IDF forces in December.

“We didn’t believe most things, but after all, this was psychological warfare so it does [affect] somehow,” said Har.

Har said he “didn’t know anything about what happened on October 7” when terrorists killed some 1,200 and took 253 hostages. “So every time, [we hear] a little bit, and a little bit more. It’s hard, I discover every time that another friend had been murdered.”

“I have not resumed my life, I don’t know where I am,” he responded to a question about what it has been like to be back from Gaza. “It will take time. That’s the truth.”

Har also said that while he’s resumed some of his hobbies like dancing, others such as baking he has not taken up again. “After an experience like that, we don’t go back to being the same people,” he added.

He said the hardest moment for him since being back was when he encountered a young man at one of the protests for the release of the hostages who told him that his cousin was part of the rescue operation.

“I told him to tell him…but he told me he was killed the previous week,” he said breaking down in tears. “It broke me completely. I don’t know who he was, but just the thought of it was difficult.”