Rescued Bedouin hostage Farhan Al-Qadi was interviewed this week by Channel 12 News and revealed that he was shot in the leg by Hamas terrorists after he refused to help them find Jews.

Farhan, a 52-year-old father of 11, worked for decades as a security guard at a packaging factory near Kibbutz Magen in the Gaza border area. He was at his post on October 7 at 6:30 a.m. when terrorists infiltrated the kibbutz.

“I thought it was just another round of rockets,” he said. “I went into the safe room and then I got a phone call from my brother telling me that there was an infiltration. I went outside and I saw three Hamas terrorists about 100 meters away shooting in my direction and running toward me.”

“I dropped my phone and raised my hands. One of them hit me with his weapon and a second one kicked me. They knocked me to the ground and tied my hands. A foreign worker passed by and they shot him right next to me.”

“I spoke to them in Arabic. I told them I was Muslim. They tested me to see if I was telling the truth and then they said, ‘Take us in your car to where the Jews are.’ I was ready to die rather than point out a Jew, not even a cat. All the people on the kibbutz are good friends of mine.”

“That’s how we were raised,” he said. “That how my grandfather was raised, my father was raised, and that’s how my children were raised.”

The terrorists then shot him in his leg, dragged him to a vehicle and brought him to Gaza through a breach in the security fence. When they reached the other side, the car stopped after about 150 meters. He noticed foreign workers being abducted and taken to a tunnel shaft in the ground. “You see them suddenly disappear,” he said. “I was in a lot of pain from my leg. I fell a few times on the way. There was a guy who decided to take me to Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis.”

When he finally got to the hospital, he couldn’t stand on his feet anymore. “I couldn’t walk from the pain; I had to crawl up the stairs on all fours. They said, ‘Look, our dog is walking.’ There were a lot of people around and you could see their joy. They felt like they had won.”

They took an X-ray of his leg, which was broken and then a doctor carried out surgery without anesthesia, a form of torture that at least one other hostage also endured.

Later, he arrived in Khan Younis. He recounted that residents started evacuating the city in anticipation of Israeli forces entering. The terrorists decided to take advantage of this opportunity. “When the residents began to leave, they mixed me in with them,” Al-Qadi explained. He walked the streets of Khan Younis, accompanied by his guards, along with thousands evacuating to a refugee tent camp.

Eventually, he was taken into a tunnel 40 meters deep. “You tell yourself – there’s no way out from here.” He was given a mattress and a blanket and stayed there under Hamas guard for no less than 8 months.

Farhan said: “For them, I’m a greater enemy than you. Because I’m a traitor. I’m Muslim and I betrayed them so they see me as an enemy more than you. They told me, ‘If you had showed us where the Jews were, you would have stayed with your family.'”

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)