The Illustrated Hostage Diary of Amit Soussana

That cursed day, Oct. 7, brought with it numerous horrific and disturbing videos, ones that the eye and heart cannot bear to witness. But there is one video I will never forget. Because alongside the terror, there was unimaginable bravery: a young woman being abducted by 10 armed terrorists, fighting them with all her strength. Refusing to let them take her. Not giving up. Fighting for her life.

Now, I am sitting on the porch at the entrance to the hostages’ headquarters in Tel Aviv, on a hot and humid summer day, waiting for that brave woman, to hear her story.

Amit Soussana, 40, a lawyer at Luzzatto & Luzzatto, has always loved nature and traveling. A few days before that horrific day, she went with a friend to the Black Arrow Memorial near Kibbutz Kissufim in the south to watch the sunset from the beautiful viewpoint there.

Beyond the fence with Gaza, very close to them, they noticed a pickup truck. Amit felt fear, “Tell me, after all these years, how come they never thought of doing something smarter,” she said to her friend. “Just Qassam rockets, all these years, they couldn’t think of anything else?”

Amit almost never had a fever. But on Thursday, Oct. 5, 2023, while at the office, she suddenly began to feel unwell. With fever and chills, she barely managed to drive home.

On Friday morning, in the young residents’ quarters in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, she woke up to noises in the yard. One of the neighbors was starting to set up a fair. Amit, who was still sick, decided to drive to her mother’s house in Sderot.

As she left with her car, she saw her neighbor and good friend, Yotam Haim, also leaving with his car. “Are you escaping, too?” she asked him through the car window. “Yes, yes,” he replied, “going to play music.” They were alike and had a good connection.

She went to rest at her mother’s house. Sick and sweaty, she left a shirt there, which later, when she was considered missing, would serve as a source of her DNA in the search among the bodies. That night, her mother urged her to stay and sleep in Sderot, but Amit insisted on returning to take care of her three cats. She only asked her mother to fix her hair a bit, and her mother brought an old-fashioned hairpin and secured her daughter’s hair.

When she returned to the kibbutz, she saw Yotam parking his car. “We arrived together!” he said to her. (Seventy days later, after being kidnapped, Yotam Haim, may he rest in peace, managed to escape his captors but was one of the three hostages mistakenly shot by IDF soldiers.)

Amit went inside, crawled into bed, and turned off her phone. She never turns off her phone.

Amit didn’t know that the next morning her life was about to change forever.

Now, sitting together in Tel Aviv, this is what she tells me:

The Closet

I woke up to the sound of Hamas rockets and a Red Alert. I knew how the rockets usually sounded here, so I immediately realized something was unusual. I said, “Yes, a day off work! I can work from home.” Those were my first thoughts. I went outside to the neighbors: “Hey, good morning, good morning!” Outside, I heard boom-boom-boom, there were already gunshots in the kibbutz, and I was all like, “What’s up? Good morning!” We didn’t get it at all. Suddenly, Yotam came out and told me, “Amit, go inside.” And Aviad Edri, a wonderful neighbor who was later murdered, ran and told us: “I met the security coordinator at the fence, he said there are terrorists.” OK, I went inside.

In the security room, I suddenly heard gunshots and shouts of “Allahu Akbar” nearby. I knew there were terrorists here. But I thought, OK, the gunshots are a battle with the IDF, but what are the chances they would come to me? It will be fine. My concern was for my mother. I kept writing to her on WhatsApp, “Let it be over already, come on, I want this to be behind me.”

I opened the security room door for one of the cats, the whole house smelled like gunpowder, and I saw my battery was about to die. Suddenly, I heard knocks. It was probably on the window or the outer wall of the security room. And then I realized: They are coming, something is about to happen. I got messages on WhatsApp: “Get under the bed!” I had a fever of 40 degrees [Celsius], my mouth was dry, and I was shaking and feeling unwell. I got under the bed; it didn’t feel safe, so I got into my small closet, behind the coats. I had about 2% battery left. I wrote in the WhatsApp family group: “Fuck, they are outside my house, knocking on the security room wall. Ugh, let this be over already.” And then, symbolically at 10:07 a.m., the battery died. Suddenly, I heard a loud boom. Within a second, someone opened the closet and immediately pulled me out.

I was in satin pajama pants, a tank top without a bra, and socks. I don’t know why I was wearing socks. He pulled me out of the security room, and I saw the house was full of terrorists. They sat me in the garden outside, on the ground, between my house and my neighbor Doron’s house. [Editor’s note: Doron Steinbrecher, who still is in captivity in Gaza.]

Above, there were two drones. Crazy. It was clear the terrorists were in a hurry and scared, afraid someone would come. And I don’t know what got into me; I just ran back into the house. I said: I need something to wear; I’m not going like this. The house was full of smoke, and I was in the closet, looking for something to wear. A terrorist was standing behind me and gave me a second, but when he saw I was not progressing, he came to pull me. So I just took the white blanket from the bed, a blanket my mother bought me.

I looked right, looked left, saw nothing. I didn’t see the neighbors; they came only to me. Why? What did I do wrong? Maybe because there were flip-flops at the entrance? Maybe because I left the key in the door? Why did they come to me?

The Struggle

All the terrorists around me were armed, one with a machete, another with a rifle. One of them started pulling me; I hugged the tree firmly, maybe I screamed a little, and I looked and saw the kibbutz gate had been breached. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was horrified. That was it; we were going to Gaza.

The field had just been plowed, and it was full of small mounds. So, I pretended to stumble and fall, moving slowly to delay them, hoping someone would come, someone would definitely come. At first, they went along with it, but at some point, they got angry and just lifted me, covered me completely with the blanket I had taken, and shouted, “Shahid, Shahid!”

There were two drones flying really low above me, following me all the way from the house. I waved my hands and feet at them: Look at me, I’m not dead! Someone come! And the terrorists looked at each other and said, “Karate, Karate.”

Then four men grabbed me, and the fight began. I wasn’t scared. I really fought them. One of them wore a purplish-pink shirt, and he was the worst. He was about 25 or 26, looked me in the eyes, and beat me. He punched me in the eye, split my lip, just severely beat me up, lifted my shirt, touched my breast, and choked me constantly. And I didn’t care. I kept going, dropping the blanket, falling to the ground on purpose, really fighting them.

The whole thing took about an hour, the fight of my life. They lifted me again, and I dropped them. Then someone arrived with a bike, probably stolen from Kfar Aza, and they put me on the back of the bike. We started riding, and I just put my hand on the wheel—see, I still have a scar—and toppled the bike. They got really mad, tore the blanket I brought into pieces, and just handcuffed me, with my hands really tightly behind me. My entire left side almost dislocated because they tied it so hard. They also tied my legs and started dragging me on the ground, face down at first. And I screamed.

Understand this: All this time, I didn’t cry, nothing, no tears. I always knew I was physically strong, but I did want to die. I wanted to die because the last image I had in my head was a video I saw on my phone while hiding in the closet, of a vehicle entering Gaza with a soldier’s body being thrown from it. That’s what I thought they were going to do to me. I didn’t think they were going to lock me up in a house.

So, it was important to me to show them that I was strong and not afraid. I tried to escape, so they turned me on my back and dragged me. I screamed, my whole body was wounded. And somehow, we were finally approaching Gaza. There was another fence, and a vehicle was waiting for us there. The driver came with a camera, and I knew they were uploading it to Telegram, so I turned my head away so my family wouldn’t see, like, that’s what I thought. And they loaded me into the vehicle.

They tied me up like a ball. Imagine the trouble I was causing them. And they transferred me to another vehicle like a sack of potatoes, from vehicle to vehicle, until I was already fainting. And in the last vehicle, everyone was huge. They put me in the back, and I remembered him, he had a really round black head, and he turned around, looked at me, and then he yelled at them: “What is this? What did you do to her? Why does she look like this?”

The Pin

At first, they took me to the roof of a private house. On the roof was a room, and in that room, three mattresses were already waiting on the floor. It was the three of us: me, Mohammad, and Mahmoud, in that room on the roof.

I remembered a woman coming up the stairs. A tall, beautiful woman in a dress. I looked at her with a certain look, trying to evoke her pity, thinking she had come to take care of me. She was smiling and asking, “Where are you from?” I answered her, “Kfar Aza.” Then she started shouting, “It’s our land, why do you take our land!?” Mahmoud grabbed her: “Shut up, shut up!”

Suddenly, a guy arrived with a sour, sour, sour cologne smell, and he came with an iron chain. I didn’t understand. He spoke with Mohammad, and suddenly they tied me up. He tied me to the bars on the window above. And that was it; from then on, I was tied up.

I had my mother’s pin, which I always hid in my hair, inside my ponytail. I never thought about what use it would be. I hid it, I don’t know, like a keepsake from my mom. So one day, I checked if I could open the lock with the pin. I said, just in case. I opened it. I managed to open it. I was thrilled, already planning how I would get out; I just needed clothes. I was always watching Al Jazeera, hearing explosions, trying to figure out where they were, and from that, my location. I knew I wasn’t far from the border. I imagined running to the border and seeing soldiers. I imagined running to the sea, swimming, and the navy coming. There were all sorts of imaginations. I didn’t know how to shoot a gun, but when Mohammad was sometimes asleep, I would try to figure out when the safety was off and when there would be an opportunity; I was always thinking about it. Always. Planning and thinking about how I would jump off the balcony. But I was scared.

I would talk to God, saying that if I got out, I would be a better person. Please, if you let me out in a hostage exchange deal, I would make my life meaningful, and I would ensure that my mother was happy.

The Assault

Mohammad was lazy. He slept all day and always came over, sitting next to me and touching me. “Are the wounds healing? Is the eye healing well?” he would ask, stroking me and not letting me wear a shirt over the exposed tank top. One day, there were crazy gunshots, and he was upstairs. I shouted to him, “Mohammad, Mohammad!” because I was tied up. Then he came running, “What, were you worried about me?” He was pleased. He then said, “You know what, now I’m calling you Samira,” as if role-playing. I thought, “Fuck, he’s taking my identity from me.” I told him, “No! No! I didn’t agree. My name is Amit! Amit.”

Then Mohammad started asking me, “Did you get your period? When you get your period, take a shower and we’ll wash your clothes.” Probably from all the stress, I had a brief period. It was a sudden burst of blood, and the next day there was no more blood. I thought, “Shit, now he’ll know.” He was happy, asking every day, “Is it over? Is it over?” I wanted him to see the pads running out, so I went to the bathroom and pretended to change. I kept this up for a week until I couldn’t lie anymore.

Then he came to me early in the morning, before the others arrived. “Come, shower.” I told him, “I don’t want to, the water is cold, I don’t want to.” He said, “Don’t worry,” and took me to the kitchen, showing me the pot where he had boiled water, like, what the fuck. He brought it to the bathroom. I went to the far end of the bathtub because the door wasn’t closed—and I was completely bent over, covering my chest, and he left me a towel there. A hand towel. I started showering, taking the pot and pouring the hot water over my face, and for a moment, I forgot everything, and a bit more shampoo...Then, suddenly I heard, “Quickly, Amit! Quickly!” And I saw him standing in the shower. I don’t remember if he was dressed. I was in shock.

He stood there with the gun. The guy who used to smile and laugh now looked like a monster, breathing heavily with a menacing look that was meant to scare me, possessed. I got up, took the small towel, and covered myself. He came over with the gun to my head, trying to pull the towel away, but I wouldn’t let him. He punched me, and I still wouldn’t let him. There was a struggle. Then I had no choice but to drop the towel. He touched me; I didn’t let him. I just closed my legs, tensed all my muscles, thinking, “This son of a bitch won’t get what he wants.” He sat me on the edge of the bathtub and continued, but I didn’t let him, determined that he wouldn’t succeed. He touched my chest and kept hitting me because I wouldn’t give in. He was in a hurry, so he just took me to the children’s room. I saw the bed and sat down, right between the door and the bed. He saw I wouldn’t give in, so he told me, “Calm down already.” All this under the threat of a gun.

Now, I mostly remember the punches. And the gun. Every second or third woman in the world has gone through something like this, and there I was, while he was doing what he was doing. I, who had never experienced anything like this in my life, told myself: “Here, it’s happening to you. Why aren’t you crying? Why aren’t you stressed? Is this what it feels like when it happens?”

The Beatings

They moved me. Suddenly, I saw a house with three or four men standing in the living room, smiling. I can’t describe what went through my mind. I was scared to death. Then they took me to a room where I saw someone sitting on a chair, another person lying on a bed, and two young women sitting and playing cards. I looked at them, and they looked at me for about a minute. I then asked them, “Are you Israelis? Are you Israeli?” It turned out they were Israeli hostages. The woman began crying and asked me, “Who were you with?” I told her, “I was alone.” “What? You were alone? I can’t believe it,” she cried. I looked at the young women and asked them, “How are you so calm?” They replied, “What choice do we have?” They were so sweet.

One day, suddenly, one of the terrorists, whom we called “the sergeant,” put my shirt over my head, bound me with iron handcuffs behind my back, and made me kneel on the floor. He began hitting me on the head with a gun and shouted, “No, no, no, that’s it, I’m throwing her out of here, I’m killing her, I’m throwing her out.” I was trembling because I didn’t understand what was happening.

It turned out they were beating me to extract information, wanting me to admit I was someone else, though I didn’t know why. They continued, mocking me with hatred and disgust, shouting and hitting me. Then other terrorists moved two armchairs, brought two sticks, and simply hung me upside down between the armchairs, like a chicken. I had masking tape over my face, my head facing the wall, and the handcuffs were tied above my knuckles to cause more pain.

I was hanging there, feeling humiliated. The three of them stood above me, one with a giant wooden stick and the other two hitting me with whatever they could find, degrading me. Boom, boom. And I didn’t cry. Then they called one of the hostages to come and convince me to “confess.” “Amit,” he told me, “I don’t know what they want. If you are who they think, just tell them; it’s better if you tell them.” I told him, “No, I’m not. I’m not.” Then they brought the young women and threatened them. I felt guilty that everyone was in this situation because of me. I really apologized to them. This lasted about 45 minutes until I felt like my hands were about to be torn off.

When it became unbearable, he released me. He told me, “Go to the room now. You have 40 minutes to tell me the truth, or I’ll kill you.” I was in the room, and he kept coming in and out, pointing the gun at me each time. I felt certain they were going to kill me. This was the end. I told myself, “No, Amit, just a little more.” Even when I was hanging, I thought, “Just a little more, it will be over soon, hang in there, it will be over soon. Everything will be fine; everything will be fine.”

The young women were brave, really. One of them told me, “Amit, I don’t think they’ll kill you. It might not sound good, but do you want us to pass on a message to your mom and dad anyway?”

I started crying and said, “Tell Mom I love her.” He kept coming in every second, and I felt like they were going to kill me or even throw me out. In the end, I somehow got through it.

But the abuses continued. For instance, they would call me to the living room, give me a dress, and sit with a timer. I had to put on the dress as quickly as possible for their amusement. Or one of them would tell me to sweep and then say, “You’re a good lawyer.” They humiliated me all the time. It drove them crazy that I held on even after the beatings. One of the hostages asked me, “How did you not cry? How did you not cry?” I told her, “I didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.”

The Pool

One day, they woke us up and took the two young hostages to the shower. We saw them washing something there. One of them called me. I helped clear the hallway, still not understanding what was happening. The girls said, “Listen, we just washed an inflatable pool.” We asked, “What? An inflatable pool? What’s the deal?” I thought they were going to torture me in that pool. We could hear them inflating the pool. We could hear shouts. They brought a water truck with a hose that reached the apartment and filled the pool, all while shouting.

The pool was huge. I was shaking and trembling. Suddenly, he came to us and said, “Swimming pool?” We burst out laughing. What did he want? For us to swim now? It was so comical. Then he said, “Come, come, see.” He took a glass of water, dipped it in the pool, and said, “Drink.” There was a water shortage, and they felt they were geniuses, thinking they had invented the idea of the century—a drinking water pool inside the house. They were so pleased with themselves. Later, the sergeant showed us how much money all this had cost. They were constantly showing off because the Hamas members received money from the organization for all of this—loads of money to waste.

An hour later, the water returned.

The Tunnel

“Get dressed!”

We started dressing quickly. Suddenly, we had to wait. They were preparing food. Then they brought us rice with a few almonds. “Eat, eat quickly.” We ate fast. We were under pressure. I understood we were moving again. I cried. Every time we moved, I cried. It wasn’t Stockholm syndrome; it was the change. Until then, there had been five of us in the house. Now, only three. And now we were leaving.

We drove a lot. Often, it was the same terrorists moving us from place to place. They were huge, really big, with ugly, hairy feet. All of them, like trolls.

Suddenly, we were in a dark room filled with many, many shoes. I heard, “No, no, no.” It was the older hostage. I looked and saw them lowering her into a shaft inside the house. One of them said to her, “Don’t worry, it’s a city down there.” These were the sentences that I really remember. She somehow went silent, and went down. Then it was my turn. There was a short iron ladder, and I had to turn around and climb down.

We were in shock. We were going down. Everyone there looked even bigger. Completely different people. Huge. This time with Hamas vests. Most of them had rifles. We walked and walked untilwe arrived at a room inside the tunnel. It was dark. There was someone huge standing at the end of the room with his face covered. Two mattresses were wrapped in black plastic. And so began four days that felt like an eternity. There was no oxygen. No air. It was a tiny place. Like a grave.

“I’m also a lawyer,” said the terrorist. He called himself Jihad.

He was intelligent. “My father worked in Israel,” he told us. “I’m about your age. And my father’s boss came to have dinner at our house in Gaza,” he said proudly, and suddenly started speaking a bit of Hebrew. He told us, “The negotiations are progressing.” His Hebrew was good. He said that when he was a kid, he watched Hebrew TV shows. “I used to watch some Israeli channel.” Suddenly, he sang to me, “Bobbie Bobbie, Binba Binba, Bobbie Binba and Ponpon.” And we were in shock. Shock. I sang with him. And we sang “Good morning, world,” and a few others. It was surreal.

We were three hostages there, and every time the terrorists came, the three of us would immediately say to them, “We can’t stay here! We can’t breathe!” We wouldn’t let go, every time. But they would say it was dangerous up there: “Boom, boom, no problem, no problem, boom, boom. No, this no, no.” We heard the bombings above us and were afraid that if the terrorists were killed up there, no one would know where we were, afraid that the shaft would get sealed. Then, one day, one of them announced, “Happy news.” They had found us a house. The three of us went up.

It was tough in the house above, but we kept saying, at least we were up here because it could always be worse, and the bombings weren’t that terrible, relatively. One day, I was lying on my back, and suddenly the song by Ariel Zilber came to me: “Without being or not being, I’m simply...” That’s how you felt. I told one of the hostages: You’re like nothing. You’re lying there. You’re not talking. “...I’m just existing.” That was it. And I don’t know where that song came from. It gave us chills because that was exactly the feeling—you were like nothing. The whole time, you lived in some consciousness just of “when.” The hope was that Israel would save us, that was it.

Coming Home

One Wednesday, one of the terrorists suddenly hung up the phone and said to me, “Amit, we wanted to release you today, but Israel couldn’t find you. You’re not on the list, nobody wants you.”

I started giving more details, and they made efforts. Suddenly, he hung up the phone: “Amit, you Israel. One hour.” Just like that. On Thursday at 11 a.m.

I said goodbye to everyone and started the journey, disguised and walking hand in hand with one of them, as if we were a couple. Suddenly, I saw a thin, old woman walking down the street, and then he signaled me: Go with her. She grabbed my hand, and we walked together.

Later, they put me in a car, and soon after, a girl all dressed in black got in. “She is like you, like you, like you.” I looked and saw—Israeli! It was Mia Shem.

And I said to her, “Mia, do you get it? Today is Thursday; on Friday we’ll be home. It’s Friday, it’s Mom, it’s cooking, it’s the smells.”

We can’t believe it, on Friday we’ll be home.

The car drove past the crowd, and they shook it. Hamas couldn’t control it. They wanted to make a parade, wanted people to stand while we walked from the car to the Red Cross. But they couldn’t manage. And I saw the people from the Red Cross. They were fighting with them, getting a bit closer, a bit closer. In the end, they got very close and quickly transferred us to their car.

Two women were driving. Now it was just women. No men, no weapons. One of them covered both of us with a blanket so we wouldn’t see everything happening around us, the crowd. They drove and said, “It’s going to be a little bumpy, don’t worry.” We drove and couldn’t believe it, everything I had dreamed of, but I had no more tears; I didn’t cry anymore.

Suddenly, I also saw the destruction outside. There wasn’t a single building standing. Then one of the women suddenly gave me the phone. She said to me, “Amit, someone wants to talk to you.”

“Amit, hello, this is the IDF. How are you? We’re waiting for you.”

And I said, “Mia, Mia! It’s the IDF!”

You know, it’s your dream. It’s the IDF.

Both of us were crying and hugging. Then he told me on the phone, “Look around.” And I saw soldiers lying in trenches along the way, looking at me and waving hello.

Later, it turned out that they had protected us from all directions at that moment.

The Moon

After the ride with the Red Cross, we arrived at the Hatzerim military base. Waiting for me there was a massive Sikorsky helicopter, beyond anything I had imagined. In the room, I finally took a shower and talked to my whole family.

Then there was a knock on the door. A whole team from 669 [the heliborne combat search and rescue extraction unit] came in. It was just for me—a whole helicopter dedicated to my rescue. I looked around, and all the faces seemed familiar. I said to the commander, “Listen, I feel like I’ve seen all of you before.” He was a handsome and sensitive guy, and he held my hand. There were two other girls with us.

Then suddenly, they called me: “Come, come, look, come.” They showed me the moon, which was red. I leaned my head on the commander’s shoulder. It was simply insane. It felt like a dream.

The Dream

Rachel: “I want to paint you a dream of the future.”

It might sound a bit cliché, but we always talked about being in the yard of one of the young hostages’ houses. She always described how it looked, with an olive tree in the yard. We would have a meal together, all the families united. It would be the closing of the circle: Everyone would bring the dish we had talked about while in captivity, and we’d sit together in that yard. Her father with the tequila and the cigar, and everyone with their families and children. That’s the dream, if you ask me today.