The mother of Hamas hostage Matan Angrest, 22, recently received a bag containing his belongings, recovered by the Israel Defense Forces in the southern Gaza Strip.
“They told me they found Matan’s bag and it would take two days to reach me,” Anat Angrest recounted, Ynet reported on Friday.
“I didn’t know what this was about, but then this bag arrived with Matan’s name handwritten by me,” she said.
It was a personal bag, she continued, from the days when he played for a Hapoel Haifa F.C. youth soccer team at age 14. “A piece of his life [was] there,” she said.
Angrest’s son is an IDF soldier and was kidnapped 21 months ago by Palestinian terrorists during the Oct. 7, 2023, cross-border Hamas-led massacre.
“He was seriously wounded in a tank on the morning of Oct. 7, evacuated unconscious to Gaza after being abused, and regained consciousness only from electric shocks connected to car batteries,” Angrest told Ynet about her son’s abduction.
“Since then, he has been subjected to interrogations, suffers from asthma attacks, shortness of breath, severe burns, and his wounds are infected in the dampness of the tunnels. They [other captives] saw him groaning and struggling. He is between life and death—and he’s still there,” she said.
Last month, Angrest’s family released video footage of Matan’s brutal abduction.
In the recording, Angrest can be seen being forcibly taken from his tank in the Nahal Oz area and beaten by a Gazan mob while unconscious.
The family also published an audio recording from inside the tank, capturing the moments before the crew’s face-to-face encounter with the Palestinian mob.
In the tank with Angrest were Sgt. Itay Chen and Capt. Daniel Perez, who were killed and whose bodies are being held by Hamas in the Gaza Strip; and Sgt. Tomer Leibovitz, who also died in the line of duty.
In the audio, Angrest can be heard shouting in panic after the tank is hit and his fellow soldiers are wounded: “What is this? A terrorist! Stop, stop! Behind him! Perez! Is anyone hit? Perez?”
“For 611 days, I avoided watching the full video. Last night, I forced myself to see it for the first time. We have no choice. Matan’s life is in danger,” Anat wrote in a statement.
Speaking to Ynet on Friday, she related that his room at home has remained largely untouched since Oct. 7, 2023.
“A few days ago I tidied his room for the first time, but the bed—I’ll touch it only when I know he’s returning,” she said. “Then I’ll buy him the softest, most luxurious sheets, the kind he deserves. Since Matan was kidnapped, there’ve been no pots, no cooking. How can I cook knowing he’s hungry? … Shabbat dinners used to be a celebration. Now, there’s silence.”
