Former Gaza hostage Matan Angrest told Channel 12’s ‘Uvda’ about his captivity, including Hamas torture, the loss of his tank crew, bonding with fellow hostage Gali Berman, and his eventual release.
Content warning: This article contains disturbing imagery, including torture and abuse.
Former Gaza hostage Matan Angrest told Channel 12’s ‘Uvda’ that he was tortured, including by electrocution, during his time in Hamas’s terror captivity, in an interview broadcast on Thursday evening.
Angrest, who was serving in a specialized tank unit with classified equipment under the 7th Armored Brigade near Nahal Oz during the October 7 massacre, was the only member of his tank crew who survived the terror attack. His crewmates, Capt. Daniel Perez, St.-Sgt. Itay Chen, and Sgt. Tomer Leibovitz, were all murdered, with their remains taken by terrorists into the Gaza Strip.
Things that fall under ‘die and don’t tell’ during torture, interrogations
“I woke up in Gaza in some house, and could not open my eyes or move my hand – my hand was burned,” Angrest said, describing the first moments he recalls following the massacre.
“I opened my eyes, and eight people were sitting in front of me. They started asking things like ‘Where were you kidnapped from? Where do you serve [in the IDF]?’ but they talked to me in Arabic, and I could not understand,” he continued.
“Someone came to me with two wires and put them on my wounds. I felt like I was being electrocuted. I screamed in pain, and then he did it to me again,” he told the interviewer.
According to the report, the terrorists already knew that Angrest was part of a tank crew containing classified systems equipment, and knew that he, as the only survivor, would be able to tell them information that could help future terror acts succeed.
“In the really hard interrogations, they kept asking things that were classified. Things like ‘Can the driver kill? Does he have a weapon?’ and I kept telling them that the driver is like a regular driver,” he said.
Angrest’s ability to move improved over time, but Hamas terrorists kept increasing the pressure. “They tortured me to the extreme. Electric shocks – trauma that will stay with me. The longest interrogation was about eight hours continuously, where they made me tell things in the ‘die and don’t tell’ category,” he recalled.
Angrest also noted that he found out via terrorist radio chatter that his three tank crewmates were murdered on October 7. “I locked myself in a room alone [after finding out], you understand that it’s over. I just thought about them and all of our experiences.”
Angrest recounts meeting Gali Berman, no longer being alone
Angrest was held alone for weeks, in locations both above ground and within the underground terror tunnels, Channel 12 noted.
Then, he was joined by fellow hostage Gali Berman. “I was with Gali for a long time, and connected with him a lot,” he recalled.
But he was separated from the other hostages and continued to be interrogated. “I would say to Gali: ‘I’m scared. I don’t know what they’ll do to me. How will I sleep at night?’”
“He tried to comfort me, [but I knew that] if they find out more things about me, it’ll be the end for me,” Angrest added.
Angrest recalls Oct. 7 massacre
During the interview, Angrest recalled how, during the massacre, he jumped into his tank and saw a white Toyota with a green-white license plate. “I rubbed my eyes. How did it get in? Suddenly, we heard gunshots, and asked ourselves, ‘Did they infiltrate into the country?’”
Perez commanded his tank to mobilize out of the Nahal Oz outpost, running over terrorists moving towards it, moving towards a firing position overlooking Shejaia. “Not long after, we were told over the radio to return to the outpost, as there was an incident. I passed by the place where I sleep – where I played backgammon with Tomer (Leibovitz) the day before,” he recalled.
He noted coming across the scene of the fight between terrorists and Golani Brigade company commander, Maj. Shilo Har-Even and his five soldiers, who were all massacred at the outpost. Perez told the tank crew to “shut off their emotions,” Angrest said.
“‘Our goal is that there will be no kidnapping,’ I don’t know how he said that – how he predicted the future,” Angrest added, citing what Perez said to the crew at the time.
“Matan, you need to be sharp. They’ll try to take whoever is in the operations room and kidnap them,” Perez warned, according to Angrest.
Angrest then noted how just after 8:30 a.m., the tank returned to the breached border fence and discovered another wave of terrorist infiltrators.
“I told Perez, ‘Look, they’re entering the country, they’re coming towards us,” he told the interviewer.
They were faced with a dilemma of whether to risk the tank to the possibility of anti-tank missile fire by closing in, or attempting, and likely failing, to stop the wave of infiltrators with long-distance fire, he noted.
Angrest, the tank’s driver, was instructed by Perez to “reverse quickly” and towards the terrorists.
“As a team, we began to understand, it’s either them or us. After the shell Itay [Chen] fired, I could see terrorists flying into the air from the blast, 50 meters away from me. While I was seeing this, I continued driving, thinking, ‘How do I destroy them all? it’s… an insane amount. I knew that things could end for us at any moment,” he recounted.
Angrest still struggles to recall everything that happened, but black box recordings fill in some gaps, Channel 12 noted. The last few moments of the recordings included someone crying, “Did someone get hit? Perez! Perez! Perez!”
Angrest recalls finding out he was being released
Angrest was released from captivity in October of 2025, after 738 days of being held by Hamas terrorists within the Gaza Strip.
It came as a surprise, he said. “They took Gili [Berman] and me somewhere while blindfolded. They removed them, and suddenly we saw [fellow hostages] Alon Ohel and Guy Gilboa-Dalal.”
“One of the senior terrorists pointed at us and said, ‘You four – you leave tomorrow. Life changed [after being released]. You wake up in the morning and look for the next step. For everyone, it seems like the struggle is over, and you go back to living normally. It goes from zero to one hundred in some ways, but in others from one hundred to zero. The scars will always remain,” he said.