Gadi Moses, 81, walked out of Hamas captivity after 482 days on January 30, 2025. The oldest hostage released to date, his head was held high. His stride was steady, befitting someone who has farmed the land for decades. He hasn’t stopped marching since.
He has marched to TV studios, calling for the release of the remaining hostages. He marched through Auschwitz-Birkenau on the International March of the Living. And now, his sights are set on marching all the way home to his beloved fields at Kibbutz Nir Oz, where he was abducted on Oct. 7, 2023.
His strength and optimism inspire everyone who hears him.
“There is no alternative but for Nir Oz to be rehabilitated,” Moses told a crowd at Kibbutz Tze’elim, just across the border from Gaza, recently.
“All we need to do is make it happen. If Nir Oz doesn’t exist, the next attack could reach Beersheva. We need to work the land until the border. We need to be there,” he said.
The event was part of the “Stories That Bind Us: Memory and Dialogue of October 7 at Heritage Sites,” a program launched by the Society for Preservation of Israel Heritage Sites (SPIHS) with support from Jewish National Fund-USA.
The evening, held at the Iron Moulding Heritage Museum on Kibbutz Tze’elim, honored both Gadi Moses and the late Gideon Pauker, who was murdered in his safe room at Kibbutz Nir Oz on Oct. 7, a week before his 80th birthday.
Veteran members of nearby communities sat on white plastic chairs on the museum lawn. Many were close friends of both men. Pauker Wineries—founded by Gideon and later revived by his family—poured drinks from a small wine truck. Young people from a local pre-army program lay on bamboo mats, hanging on every word Moses uttered.
“My October 7 experience was short compared to others,” he told them. “Within a moment, they shoved me onto a motorbike between two men and drove me a few miles across the border.”
That moment—sudden and violent—was the start of 482 days in captivity. He never saw another hostage. He was moved through 10 homes and apartments in Gaza, all above ground. Families lived there. Armed guards watched him around the clock.
Moses endured physical and psychological abuse. His captors told him that his partner Efrat Katz, his daughter Moran, and his two granddaughters were all being held in Gaza too. That is, until the day he heard on the radio that Efrat had been killed on Oct. 7. For the rest of his captivity, he believed his entire family had died.
And yet, he found moments of dark humor. Like the time one of the guards asked him for a back massage.
“It was the height of absurdity,” he said. “There I was, massaging the back of my half-naked captor with perfumed cream, two Kalashnikovs lying on the floor.”
Moses never considered escaping. “Where would I run to?” he asked. “I didn’t know where I was. I had no sense of direction.”
And he didn’t want the army to come for him. “I didn’t want a soldier risking his life for mine.”
He made a choice—to survive. “I decided not to be afraid,” he said. “I heard the aircraft overhead. I heard the bombs. The terrorists were terrified. But I told myself: ‘If I die, I die.’”
To stay sane, he talked to himself. He paced his small room for hours, walking the equivalent of miles each day. And he sang “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem. Over and over again, hundreds of times.
“The words—‘to be free in our own land’—took on a completely new meaning from the other side of the border.”
He also decided something else: He would never let them break him. “I stood up straight. I stayed proud. The terrorists saw I wasn’t a walkover.”
On day 481, he was told he’d be released. But then, the terrorists drove him to a cemetery and made him stand over a fresh grave.
“I thought that was it,” he said. “I said goodbye to my family in my heart.”
It turned out to be a propaganda video; one last act of cruelty.
But the next day, he saw her—Arbel Yehoud, 30 years old, a fellow hostage from Nir Oz. “I’ve known her since she was born,” he said. His happiness turned to horror when Arbel was yanked from their shared vehicle by shouting captors, and he broke down.
“I had visions of Babi Yar,” he said. “I thought they were going to execute her. And then me.”
But they didn’t. Arbel and Gadi were driven over the border in separate Red Cross vehicles—back into the arms of their families, and where Gadi learned that Moran and her daughters had survived.
Since then, Moses has been overwhelmed by the love and support of the Israeli people. “We have a wonderful nation,” he said. “But we can’t afford to break. We have to face whatever comes, and find a way through.”
He plans to return to Nir Oz soon. “I have strength. I have faith,” he said. “We’ll show the world we’re determined. That will be our victory.”
Boaz Kretchmer, who runs the Iron Moulding Heritage Museum, watched the event from the side. He has lived in the Gaza Envelope for 50 years.
“My own grandson, who is also Gideon Pauker’s grandson, was seriously wounded in Kfar Aza,” Kretchmer said. “Yarden Bibas and his parents are from Tze’elim. Almost all my friends from Nir Oz were either murdered or taken. Gadi is the only one who came home alive.”
That’s why “Stories That Bind Us” matters, he said. “It links our past to October 7. It gives us space to come together and share. Our community needed this.”
As the evening drew to a close, the pre-army mechina students crowded around Gadi. Some asked questions. Most just stood near him, quiet and in awe.
They looked at him the way people look at superheroes. And they weren’t wrong.