Israeli hostage tells SA audience how she gained peace, purpose during 55 days in Gaza

Video of Sapir Cohen sharing her testimony at an event in Johannesburg last Wednesday

Sapir Cohen, a young Jewish woman who was held hostage in Gaza for 55 days believes God specifically prepared her for the ordeal and equipped her to protect a teenage girl who was held captive with her.

Speaking at an event in Johannesburg hosted by The Base and the Jewish National Fund South Africa she shared how a prayer based on Psalm 27 impacted her powerfully before and after she and her boyfriend, Sasha Trupanov were abducted by Hamas terrorists at Kibbutz Nahal Oz in Israel on October 7 last year.

She said that six months before she was taken hostage she had a premonition that something bad was going to happen to her. She thought she might have a serious illness and sought help from various doctors.

During this time she turned to prayer for the first time in her life, asking God to heal her. Then, she said, Psalm 27 appeared in her Instagram with a message promising that if she read the Scripture every day for 30 days she would be healthy and would experience miracles.

“And from that day, I say this prayer every day — every day, for 30 days. And the last day was the October 7th,” said Sapir.

She said in the week before she was kidnapped she had started noticing that the psalm did not speak about medicine but about war — about calling on God to save her from ememies. She noted that even the word “Hamas” [Hebrew for “violence”] appeared in the Psalm.

“I remember that I prayed and I’m saying: “Why I pray this? It’s not what I wanted. From which war am I going to be saved. On October 7, I understood the meaning of my prayer,” said Sapir.

On the weekend of October 7 she had convinced Sasha to accompany her on a visit to his parents at Kibbutz Nahal Oz to celebrate the holiday of Simchat Torah. At 6am on October 7 they woke up to the sound of a massive barrage of rockets. There was no time to make way to a bomb shelter so they lay down next to a wall.

After about an hour they got a message from Sasha’s mother that Kibbutz Be’eri was under terrorist attack. Turning to an online news site, they learned more about the massacre that was underway in southern Israel.

They hid under a bed and waited in fear. Then they heard explosions and screams as hundreds of terrorists invaded their kibbutz. In that moment, Sapir said she understood the meaning of her prayer and was terrified. But she kept saying her Psalm 27 prayer over and over again and began to feel an inexplicable peace in the situation.

The couple were taken separately. The last she saw of Sasha he was on the floor with his hands over his head. His face was bleeding after a beating. She was taken to Gaza on a motorbike. Civilians there cheered the terrorists and touched and beat her.

She said that during her captivity in Gaza she was held in tunnels for a month and in homes for another month. The conditions were harsh but she felt she experienced many miracles, as she had been promised.

Miracles

“And I think that one of the biggest miracles that I felt is that I understood that I was supposed to be there. I was with another hostage, a young girl, 16 years old. I met her on the first day and when I saw her, she was terrified and she was crying and I’m saying: ‘God, I don’t need more than it to understand that I need to be in this place. I want to make her happy and I want to save her.’

“And from that moment that I decided to take this responsibility. I felt so strong. I felt that I could take every bad moment and make it a funny moment. And she doesn’t understand how can I do that. And even the terrorists didn’t understand how can I be happy in this situation,” said Safir.

One terrorist told her she was his enemy and he hated her but when she was around there was light.

During every day of captivity she said three things: she said her prayer, she thanked God for sending her there and giving her power to endure and to protect the young girl and she thanked God for all the angels he had sent to her.

She said that after she was released and got back to Israel she discovered how many people had been praying for her. She understood that the angels she had felt in Gaza were real.

Unfortunately her boyfriend, Sasha, and many other hostages are still in Gaza, she said. She had seen how badly hostages were treated. Some had serious illnesses but were not getting appropriate treatment and medicine. On the first day she saw terrorists beating an 85-year-old hostage who died a few days later.

She said that in captivity, hostages think about their families every day. They don’t even know which family members are dead or alive. “Unfortunately, they don’t have time and we need to do everything to bring them back home and alive,” she said.

Concluding her testimony, Sapir said that during her captivity, she saw TV images of thousands of Jewish people gathered on a public square. She was surprised when a terrorist remarked that when the Jews were together like that, they were “very, very, strong”. She said she believes one of the main purposes for the war is to unite Jewish people.

In reply to a question about how she had felt about being invited to South Africa, she said many people had told her not to visit SA because the government did not like Israel. “This is the reason I wanted to visit, especially to see the Jewish people. It was very important for you to hear first-hand,” said Sapir.

When asked whether she experienced any kindness while in Gaza, she said: “In Gaza you do not see kindness. The terrorists’ goal is to protect you. They give you food. When I was in custody, terrorists told me: “When you go back to Israel, tell your people we will come back again and again, and the next time it will be even worse,” she said.

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