Elderly Israeli hostage reveals how he was forced to cook for his Hamas captors: ‘If someone tells them to kill us, they’ll do it’

An elderly Israeli grandpa held captive by Hamas revealed to The Post on Monday how he was forced to cook for his captors — while sharing barely a single pita a day with another hostage.

Luis Har, 72, who was held for 129 days, was tasked with cooking for the five terrorists who watched over him and four other hostages at gunpoint all hours of the day in a small second-story apartment somewhere in Gaza.

The elderly man also prepared food for himself and his fellow captives, at least at the beginning.

“I prepared the food. I cooked. In the beginning, there were a lot of products for cooking. We had a lot of eggs. I’d make shakshuka. I’d make omelets. I’d make salads and soups using tomatoes and beans and whatever else they gave me,” said Har, a father of four.

“This is what I would do. I would cook for the five hostages and the five terrorists. The terrorists would take the food and take it to another place where they could watch it,” he said, explaining how their mistrustful captors would hide the ingredients when he wasn’t cooking.

“Only once, one of the terrorists said, ‘Thank you for the food,’ ” Har said.

But as the war dragged on, their food supplies dwindled, and the terrorists became increasingly selfish – even while three of the hostages had been freed, leaving just him and his friend Fernando for the terrorists to feed.

“Slowly, slowly, the food became less. First there were no more eggs. Then there were fewer pitas. In the last days, it was just Fernando and me, and we shared one pita a day, half for Fernando and half for me. And we were eating a little piece of the pita at a time so there would be enough to last all day,” he said, noting the two were also sharing a single liter of water per day.

“That was all the food we had, and we tried to survive on it,” he added, telling how it reached a point where he and Fernando were hiding their food from the terrorists to avoid being starved to death.

“Otherwise one of the terrorists would just eat whatever he’d see. He’d just walk in, and if there was just one pita he’d take it. We started hiding that one pita under a pillow.”

The terrorists told Har and Fernando that all of Gaza was running out of food and blamed the Israeli army for cutting off supplies – but other hostages have told how Hamas regularly gorged on humanitarian aid meant for civilian populations.

“Hamas eats like kings while hostages starve,” freed hostage Eli Sharabi told the UN Security Council in March after being released severely emaciated in February.

Har’s health also suffered during his captivity. When he was taken from Kibbutz Nir Yitzhak – along with his girlfriend, her brother, sister, niece and even their dog – Har weighed 187 pounds.

When he was finally freed in February 2024, he’d lost 35 pounds.

And he’s not the only one – many hostages freed from Hamas have lost up to 40% of their body weight, according to Israel’s Ministry of Health, which has blamed the situation on the callous lack of food and proper nutrition Hamas is providing the captives.

“Your body learns what to do,” Har said. “When you don’t eat enough, when you don’t drink enough, your body does everything slowly. You move slowly. You talk slowly. You do everything slowly to stay alive.”

But malnutrition was only one of the hostages’ worries – second to being potentially roused from their ratty mattresses by an executioner ready to put a bullet in their head.

“We would sleep but with one eye open,” Har said. “We know all the time, these are Hamas, and if someone tells them to kill us, they’ll do it.”

The terrorists themselves – who worked in shifts guarding them and never left them alone – were temperamental at best.

“Some days they were in a good mood, other days they were more aggressive,” Har said. “You had to know how to behave at the right time. If you got the feeling things were bad one day, you kept your distance. Other days we would try to be friendly.”

He and his fellow captives were allowed to “shower” once every two weeks – but the experience consisted of all five of them sharing a single bucket of cold water and a scrap of soap to wash themselves and their threads of clothing.

They weren’t able to brush their teeth the entire time or even change from the clothes they were captured in. Come winter, they were given a sheet to wrap themselves, in and Har was handed a pair of holed-socks for his bare feet.

Since the fighting resumed in Gaza on March 18 after Hamas reneged on the latest ceasefire deal, about 24 hostage are believed to still be alive. At least 35 are believed to be dead.

Har is embarking on a speaking tour of the North America to share his story and remind people about the hostages still in captivity and what they might be going through.

“I’m just trying to keep the hope alive for the families,” he said. “The information from countries outside of Israel isn’t exactly the truth. The news is never anymore about October 7th and why they started all these problems. All people know is how many people Israel bombed.

“It’s terrible when they don’t know exactly what happened that started this war. I try to tell the truth about what happened to me.”