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Shoshan Haran, an Israeli agronomist and former hostage, has said that she and her community in Kibbutz Be'eri were "naive" about Hamas in the years leading up to the October 7, 2023 attack, acknowledging that the militant group had been explicit about its intentions to kill Israelis.
In an interview with FRANCE 24's Tête à Tête program, Haran reflected on her community's relationship with Gaza before the assault that triggered the ongoing war. She noted that Palestinians from the enclave had worked inside the kibbutz, and that many of her neighbors had driven sick Gazan children to Israeli hospitals for medical treatment. That history of engagement, she suggested, made it difficult for residents to accept that Hamas genuinely sought their destruction.
"First of all, we were naive," Haran said. "We didn't really believe that they want to kill us all. Although they were explicit about it." She clarified that by "they" she meant Hamas specifically, pointing to the group's public declarations, speeches and written statements over the years.
Haran was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Be'eri on October 7, 2023, along with her daughter, her sister-in-law and their children. She spent 50 days in captivity in Gaza before being released on November 25, 2023, as part of a temporary ceasefire and prisoner exchange arrangement. Her account adds to a growing body of testimony from former hostages that has shaped Israeli public understanding of the attack and its aftermath.
The former hostage, who holds a doctorate in agriculture and founded the NGO Fair Planet, described how she assumed a position of responsibility almost immediately after being taken. She said she understood she was "on a mission" to serve as "the liaison between my family and the captors," a role that required her to negotiate daily needs and manage an extraordinarily tense dynamic.
Haran credited her survival strategy in part to books she had read by Holocaust survivors. She said the central lesson she retained was "not to show weakness." Through deliberate body language and sustained eye contact, she explained, she was able to "kind of demand respect" from her captors even while detained under armed guard.
She said this approach shaped how she presented herself throughout her captivity, allowing her to maintain a measure of psychological control in a situation where she had almost none. Her testimony underscores a recurring theme among released hostages: the importance of mental discipline in enduring abduction and uncertainty about the fate of relatives.
The interview took place as Haran's memoir, "Mission in Captivity," is published in English. She spoke from Durham, North Carolina, where she is rebuilding her life in a different kibbutz. The book's English-language release brings her account to a wider international audience at a time when debate over the October 7 attack continues in Israel and abroad.
Only after her release did Haran learn the full extent of what had happened to her family on October 7. Her husband, Avshalom, and her sister had not been taken hostage; they were murdered during the attack. The news confronted her only once she was back in Israel, after weeks of captivity in which she had no reliable information about their fate.
Her son-in-law, Tal, was held in Gaza's tunnel network for 505 days. When he was eventually freed, he conveyed to Haran her husband's final words. According to his account, Avshalom's last message was: "It was a pleasure to live." Haran described the phrase as an enduring consolation and a testament to the man she lost.
Asked about accusations of genocide leveled against Israel over its military campaign in Gaza, Haran rejected them outright. She called the allegations "a lie," according to the interview. Her comments place her among Israeli voices who dispute the legal and political characterizations advanced by South Africa and other states in international proceedings.
Haran also rejected the notion that Israel bears sole responsibility for the war's humanitarian toll, framing the October 7 attack as the event that initiated the current chapter. Her position mirrors the official Israeli stance, which holds that Hamas's assault and the continued detention of hostages justify the scope of the military response.
Haran's account of her captivity has become part of a broader reckoning in Israel over the failures of October 7. She described herself and her community as having misread Hamas's intentions despite what she characterized as clear public signals. The kibbutz movement, long associated with secular, left-leaning Zionism and a willingness to engage with Gaza through labor and medical programs, has been particularly affected by the attack.
Be'eri, one of the communities hit hardest on October 7, lost more than a hundred residents in the assault. The kibbutz's pre-war ties to Gaza, including work permits and medical referrals, are now cited in Israeli debates about whether such engagement was ever reciprocated or whether it produced a dangerous complacency.
Haran said she is now living in a different kibbutz and continues to mourn her husband. "I'm missing my husband every day," she said. "Every minute, every second." Her memoir, she hopes, will preserve the memory of those killed and document what she considers the lessons of the attack for Israeli society and for the wider world.
The interview was conducted by FRANCE 24 journalists Marc Perelman and Sophian Aubin for the Tête à Tête program. It aired amid continuing negotiations and military operations related to the conflict, and as families of remaining hostages press Israeli authorities for further deals to bring captives home.
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