Former Oct. 7 hostage at Brown: ‘They hurt me on purpose’

PROVIDENCE — Maya Regev, who was abducted by Hamas along with her brother from the Nova music festival during Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks in Israel and held captive in Gaza, spoke here Oct. 8, three years and a day after her capture.

Regev, speaking at Brown RISD Hillel, described before an audience of several hundred people, mostly students, her life before the music festival, how she ended up at Nova, the chaos of Oct. 7 and her time in captivity. The event was one of several organized by the local Jewish community to commemorate the third anniversary of Oct. 7, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

She also described being tortured by her abductors, including civilians and medical professionals.

"Maya's testimonial is a painful and meaningful account of the innocent, joyous lives that were ripped apart by hatred," said Steven A. Baker, President and CEO of the Jewish Alliance of Greater Rhode Island, which co-sponsored the event. "It reminds us of the education and propaganda that has led to this horrific era for the Jewish people and Israel's right to exist and defend itself."

Eli Levin, a first-year student at Brown, agreed. “It was incredibly powerful,” he said of Regev’s talk. “The sheer strength it took, of perseverance, came through in every word she had to say. It’s going to stick with me for a long time.”

Regev said that before the festival, she was working as a waitress after finishing her service in the Israel Defense Forces. She was in Mexico on vacation with her family when a friend called to invite her to come to the festival. After thinking about it, she and her brother, Itay, decided it would be too good of an experience to miss.

During the first hours of the festival, it was.

“It was, I think, until that day, the best party that's ever been in Israel,” Regev said. “It was literally that good...I remember standing in the main stage with Omer Shemtov, with Itay, my brother, and some of my friends, and I’m hugging one of my friends, and I'm telling her, ‘Wow, Mica, I'm having so much fun, I can't believe we have, like, six more hours. Like, I'm so excited, I'm so happy that I came.’”

Then the music stopped, and the DJ announced there were rockets, a red alert. Rockets and red alerts are common in Israel, so Regev and her friends waited for trouble to pass. But as the morning wore on and information trickled in, it became clear this was different.

Regev found a police officer. He told her, “One woman got shot in the head. There are terrorists in Israel. You need to escape.” She and her friends began running away, through fields.

As they ran, Regev’s phone rang; it was her father. “I didn't want to answer the phone, because I didn't want him to hear all the screaming, all the gunshots coming from everywhere, people, you know, dying,” she said. “I didn't want him to know that I'm running for my life, because I knew that they would just come to where I am, and I didn't want to risk. So, I didn't answer any of his calls at that time.”

After they had been running for more than an hour, Regev’s phone rang, an unknown number. It was Ori Danino, a friend of a friend. He had escaped but was coming back to try to save Regev and her friends. “He did a U-turn,” she said.

Danino picked them up but, ultimately, the car was stopped by terrorists, who captured Danino, Regev, her brother and the others. Danino died in captivity.

For much of the talk, Regev described the appalling conditions in captivity. She had been shot in the initial attack, but she wasn’t taken for medical treatment for more than a week.

“He lifted my leg up, he started tilting it,” Regev said of a Gazan doctor. “He hurt me on purpose, and he screamed at me, ‘You're going to die here. You deserve to be here. We're going to kill all the Jews. Nobody cared about you. Nobody is fighting for you.’”

Her captors assigned a Gazan teacher to watch Regev. “She showed me videos of the stuff she teaches her kids, her students. She showed me videos of kids wearing kafiya, holding guns and screaming ‘death to the Jews.’”

During her captivity, Regev said, she was sent to live with a regular Gazan family, including their teenage daughters. “I was in a family home, surrounded by kids from age four to 14, walking around me, talking to me like it's normal.”

Regev continued, “So when people ask me, ‘Do you think there are any innocent people in Gaza?’ No, I'm sorry, but no. I don't think that, because I lived with them, I lived among them.”

At moments, Regev reflected on what kept her going: her family free in Israel, her brother, Itay, still in captivity, God — and Guy Illouz. Illouz and Regev met in the hospital. He was there because he’d been shot three times at the festival, in the hand and in the back, after “watching all of his friends die.” They became friends immediately.

“One day, I'm calling his name, and he's not answering,” Regev said. “Guy died from his wounds right next to me, a day and a half after we met, because he didn't receive the right medical treatment.” She said that this was another reason she needed to go on. She was the only one who knew how Illouz died — and his family “deserve to know what happened to him.”

Faith also played a role. “I can say that at the lowest place I've ever been — you know, I was in hell, I was in a place where I was, again, hated simply for being Jewish,” Regev said. That “was the place I felt God the most.”

“Trust yourself, and trust God that he knows what's good for you,” Regev said as she concluded her remarks. “Be grateful for what you have, and be grateful for what you don't have, because if you — if it's not yours, then it's not meant to be yours.”

Asked if she had any advice for Americans, she noted that she spoke at the University of Texas at Austin the same day as an influent anti-Israel activi, who, the ADL notes, has "expressed explicit support for...Hamas, the Houthis, Hezbollah."

“Everything you hear, everything you see online, the easiest thing to do is just to repeat the slogan, just to be a part of something,” Regev said. “Even if it's something you believe in, please check before you go and you spread it, because it's important.”

Regev was released in November 2023, a few days before her brother, Itay, in a prisoner exchange. She underwent multiple surgeries at Soroka Medical Center in Israel due to the bullet wounds in her leg — and the further damage inflicted on her by Gazan doctors, who had sewn her foot on the wrong way.

The audience gave Regev a standing ovation. “Everything's been positive,” said Brown Students for Israel Co-President Lev Kotler-Berkowitz, who helped to organize the event, about the audience’s response. “I mean, her story is just really unbelievable, and being able to really engage with it and hear straight from her is an experience a lot of people really value. Just being able to learn new details, hearing her tell it is just unbelievable.”

The evening was organized by Brown RISD Hillel, Brown Students for Israel, the Jewish Alliance, Temple Emanu-El, Temple Beth-El, Congregation Beth Sholom, Chabad of College Hill and StandWithUs, in addition to individual supporters.

DANIEL MARGOLIS is the editor of Jewish Rhode Island.