The strangest part of her seven-week ordeal, said Chen Goldstein-Almog, formerly an Israeli hostage of Hamas, were the long, almost intimate conversations she had with her captors.
They talked about their families, their lives and the extreme danger they all faced.
One of the gunmen holding her even apologized for the killing of her husband and one of her daughters by other Hamas gunman, she said.
“It was a mistake and against the Quran,” he told her, Ms. Goldstein-Almog remembered.
She said a long silence followed, and the room she and three of her children were being held in immediately filled with tension.
“I didn’t respond,” she said. She was distraught about their deaths, but at that moment, she said, “I didn’t feel I could express any negative feelings.”
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