It's been nine months since Moran Stella Yanai's release from Hamas captivity, yet the memories of those harrowing days continue to shape her reality—and shed light on the complex, often invisible, aftermath of modern warfare.
In a recent interview with Israeli news outlet N12, she revealed Hamas' calculated strategy of psychological manipulation that extended far beyond the confines of her Gaza prison.
"They're not playing just with us," Yanai says, "They continue to torture and abuse our families."
This abuse, she explains, took the form of a cruel economic game— her captors would interrogate her about her father's finances, probing for weaknesses in the family's economic armor. "How much money would he give in exchange for you?" they would ask. Her father then received photographs of her accompanied by time-sensitive ransom demands—a trauma she believes rivals her own. "My parents experienced trauma no less than I did," Yanai asserts.
But the economic extortion was just one facet of a multi-pronged assault on Yanai's identity. With alarming regularity, her captors would attempt to erode her religious and cultural foundations, pressuring her to convert to Islam. "Almost daily, one of them would enter the room, saying 'It would be better for you to be a Muslim woman,'" Yanai recalls. These weren't mere suggestions; they were part of a systematic effort to break down her sense of self, with promises of earlier release dangled as bait for conversion.
For Yanai, and likely for many of the women held captive, these pressures tapped into a primal fear. "As a woman, my biggest fear is being sold," she confesses.
* JPost contributed to this article.