A freed Israeli hostage has spoken out about her harrowing experience under Hamas captivity, revealing that the terrorists tried to force her to convert to Islam while also extorting her family for ransom.

Moran Stella Yanai, 41, who was abducted during the brutal attack on the Nova Music Festival on October 7, shared her ordeal in an interview with the Israeli N12 network. Yanai described how her captors tried to pressure her into conversion, promising she would be freed sooner if she accepted Islam.

“Almost daily, one of them would enter the room, saying, ‘It would be better for you to be a Muslim woman,’” Yanai recounted. “At one point, they even sent a comrade to bring a head covering and show me what it means to be a Muslim woman.”

Yanai, a jewelry designer, was held hostage in Gaza for 44 days. She spoke of her deepest fear during captivity: being sold into forced marriage and having to convert to Islam. “As a woman, my biggest fear is being sold, that someone would forcefully marry me and that I will have to convert,” she explained.

In addition to the psychological torture she endured, Yanai revealed that her captors targeted her family with emotional and financial abuse. They demanded a ransom for her release, intensifying the trauma by sending her father a photo of her, along with threats to kill her if the money was not paid.

“My father received a picture of his daughter and was told that if he didn’t pay money within an hour, they would start killing us one by one,” Yanai said, describing the deep shock her father went into upon receiving the threat. “My parents experienced trauma no less than I did,” she added.

Yanai was one of the first hostages freed by Hamas in November as part of a temporary ceasefire agreement between Hamas and Israel. Under the deal, Hamas released 105 hostages in exchange for the release of 240 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)