Channel 12's Interview with Hadas Dagan and Yasmin Porat — Translation and Transcript

17-min read

[Excerpt of journalist 1] A report on a hostage event in kibbutz Be’eri, in a dining hall, terrorists that hold…

[Excerpt of journalist 2] Another focal point that lasts for hours in the dining hall of kibbutz Be’eri…

[Excerpt of journalist 3] Large forces of army and police that are trying to act to free those…

[Excerpt of journalist 4] We still don’t know the full picture there…

Interviewer: For a long time, you didn’t want to be interviewed. Why did you agree?

Hadas Dagan: I stayed in order to tell the story, to pass it to those families, the last moments of their beloved.

Interviewer: You are the last one to see them?

Hadas Dagan: Yes.

Narrator: It’s been two months that Hadas Dagan is silent, but the walls are talking, telling the horrible story in Pessi’s house in kibbutz Be’eri—a silent testimony for the horror—one of the worst that happened on October 7: 40 terrorists against army and police forces, and in between them 15 hostages. Only 2 women that were there survived, only one of them was inside the house until the bitter end.

Hadas Dagan: In this event lies a very heavy moral dilemma, a very tough one.

Interviewer: What moral dilemma are you talking about?

Hadas Dagan: You will hear the story and then understand it.

[6:50]

We woke up to “red colour” [an alert] and an orange screen. And from the first moment I’m telling Adi, “Look at the screen, it’s something different. Something is happening here.”

In the meantime, we understand that there is penetration, and then we hear a knock on the door.

Narrator: Those who stand on the other side of the door are the couple Yasmin [Porat] and Tal, who escaped from the terrorists and thought they would find a safe shelter in one of the houses in Be’eri.

Yasmin Porat: Accepting us was a beautiful couple. They accepted us in the nicest way possible. We first sit in their living room. Hadas takes charge of Tal, and like a psychologist calms him down.

Hadas Dagan: I stoke his head, telling him, “Relax, you are now in a safe place.”

Yasmin Porat: And then we hear a lot of bangs of Qassams [rockets], and Tal is in terrible anxiety, and then Hadas says, “Okay, I think it’s about time.” It was, I think, 7:00–7:30, “let’s get in the safe room.”

[7:30]

Hadas Dagan: I’m telling Adi, “Come to the safe room.” He says, “Just a moment.” It’s so typical of Adi. “They didn’t eat, they danced all night and must be very hungry and thirsty,” and he makes them coffee and sandwiches.

Interviewer: During the red alert?

Hadas Dagan: Yes, during the whole thing.

Yasmin Porat: From 8 a.m. we sit in the safe room, and Hadas and Adi, who have WhatsApp groups of the kibbutz, start getting messages that terrorists are penetrating the houses. People actually write, “They entered my home,” and then the connection to them is lost.

And then, I think toward 13:00, suddenly Hadas says, “Wow! Adi, they are one row above us,” and Tal decided that we get into the closet, there was a wardrobe there.

[12:56]

Hadas Dagan: And they enter the closet, close the door, and we hear a mess, that they’re making a mess.

Yasmin Porat: Everything shatters in the house, glasses, screams in Arabic, and you understand that they are there. I still don’t know how many, but many, and 2–3 minutes from the break-in moment, “Boom! Boom! Boom!”

Hadas Dagan: They try to open the door, and Adi and I are both on the door. We had a fight on the door’s handle.

Yasmin Porat: For an hour, they didn’t manage to break into the safe room.

Hadas Dagan: And during that time, someone from the other side of the door, speaks Hebrew, and he tries to convince us to come out.

Yasmin Porat: They call them by name, “Adi and Hadas, come out,” like that.

Hadas Dagan: “Your neighbours came out and see that that we do no harm.” We don’t answer, we are on the door the whole time. And they don’t manage to open the door.

Yasmin Porat: At that point I am already—I have 3 children by the way, 2 girls and one boy—I begin to write them a farewell on WhatsApp.

Hadas Dagan: I tell Adi that I love him, and then a moment of silence, and then a terrible “boom!” on the door. And at that moment the whole door just collapses, and at that stage I still say, “Please! Please!” this way with the hands [in the air], and they tell us, “Put your hands on your heads.” And they find Tal and Yasmin in the closet and take us out of the house.

[14:00]

And they take us some 30 metres to Pessi’s house.

Sharon Cohen, daughter-in-law of the late Pessi Cohen, in Pessi’s now-destroyed house: What’s left? Ash and dirt.

This is the kitchen, here was the living room, and at this corner there was a balcony that she recently renovated.

Shai Cohen, son of the late Pessi Cohen, in Pessi’s now-destroyed house: This area was the dining hall of the house, it’s a dining room, there was a long table.

Interviewer 2, in Pessi Cohen’s now-destroyed house: That’s why everyone’s confused and said, “The kibbutz’s dining hall.”

Shai Cohen, son of the late Pessi Cohen, in Pessi’s now-destroyed house: Yes, that’s the famous dining hall. It was actually here.

Narrator: And indeed, the defence forces initially regarded all the events that occurred in Pessi’s dining room as a hostage event in Be’eri’s dining hall, while the real kibbutz’s dining hall is located dozens of metres away, and no terrorists actually reached it.

At that weekend, Pessi Cohen hosted in her home her sister Hanna, her husband Yitzhak and their son Tal.

On Saturday, at 12:56, the terrorists broke in. They murdered Yitzhak and wounded Tal, then seated Hanna and Pessi at the table, and other terrorist groups dragged more families into the house. From the adjacent house, they bring Aylus and the 12-year-old twins, Liel and Yanai, who live with her. From the house opposite it, Hava Ben Ami. From the adjacent houses row, Ze’ev and Zehava Hacker. Last, they bring Adi and Hadas with Yasmin and Tal.

Hadas Dagan: We’re all neighbours, living door to door. All the people present sit around the table in Pessi’s dining room. We are surrounded, but they also come and go all the time. At that phase they are very tranquil, very confident. At that stage, I see they are dressed up, they are soldiers, entirely, except for the translator. He was different.

Interviewer: In his look?

Hadas Dagan: Yes, he was dressed differently.

Resistance fighter, in Arabic, running in the street toward another fighter and a man he is holding: Are you Arab? Arab?

Narrator: In this clip, that was taken in Re’im, the Nova party’s area, we see how the terrorists catch Suheib Abu Amer, a 22-year-old bus driver from East Jerusalem.

Resistance fighter 2: Where are the soldiers? Where? Where?

Narrator: In order to verify he is Arab, the terrorists call his family.

Abed, Suheib’s brother: At 9:30 he calls us from his phone, “There are people who want to talk to you.” Who are they? “Hello, we are from the Qassam brigades, the guy is with us, we want to know where he is from. We said, “From Jerusalem.” He said, “Okay. We are not taking him to Gaza. He stays with us: we’re guarding him.” And he hung up the call.

Narrator: The terrorists kidnap Suheib and take him with them to Pessi’s house to act as a translator to the hostages.

Yasmin Porat: He told me, “Look at me. I’m from East Jerusalem, we want to take you to Gaza.”

Hadas Dagan: And at that moment there is some tension around the table. Liel is scared, the word “Gaza” frightened her, and then the translator said, “Calm down, we are only taking you to the Erez checkpoint, and by tomorrow evening you will be back home.”

At that point, Yasmin says, “Listen, I have friends in the army and the police. I have phone numbers if you like.”

Narrator: The commander of the force, Hasan, accepts Yasmin’s proposal.

[15:15]

Yasmin Porat: He said this: that we call 100 [police emergency line] and that I talk first and say that we are 40 hostages and terrorists here, and that we want the police to come and allow us to go out with you to Gaza.

A policewoman answers me.

Policewoman, on the phone: Hello, this is the police, Shiraz.

Yasmin Porat, on the phone: Hello Shiraz, this is Yasmin speaking. I am here in kibbutz Be’eri, with 50 hostages, together with Palestinian guys. And they want to release us, the hostages, and they want to get out of here safely.

Yasmin Porat: And she starts asking me guiding questions, and I tell them, “Come here, where are you?”

He became nervous and said, they say to me… He wants to talk, get an Arabic speaker on the phone. So I tell her, and all under pressure

Hasan, on the phone in Arabic: I’m from Qassam brigades, Hamas. If you make trouble, I kill one of the hostages! There are 50 people here.

Policeman, on the phone in Arabic: What’s the issue, talk to me.

Hasan, on the phone in Arabic: The issue is that I want to take them all to Gaza. If someone tries to shoot us on the way, I will kill one hostage. I’m getting out of Be’eri. If you don’t tell the army to guarantee our safe passage, to bring the hostages to Gaza, 50 people will all be killed.

Yasmin Porat, on the phone: Are you with me, policeman?

Policeman, on the phone: Yes.

Yasmin Porat, on the phone: There is one dead here, and one wounded. We really want you to save us.

Yasmin Porat: And then they tell me, “Come with us to the road and check…” All the time they thought there were soldiers hiding there in the bushes and such. “Come check if there are policemen.”

The policemen have not arrived yet. We call them twice more. I say to them, “Come on, where are you!? Israel Police, we are here alone with 40 terrorists.”

Hadas Dagan: At that point, when some tension builds up, they take us out. They very quickly take us in, and it became clear to me that something in their plan had gone wrong.

Narrator: The terrorists take Adi, Hadas, Pessi, Ze’ev, Tal and Tal out of the house, and they become totally exposed. They leave the rest inside.

[16:00]

Yasmin Porat: 4 p.m., suddenly Jeeps arrive on the scene, and we understood that the army arrived at last. 5 or 10 minutes later, a barrage of shots started. We all went down on the floor.

Hadas Dagan: At that point, it was clear to me that our role was to be a human wall between our forces that arrive and them.

Adi and I press ourselves against each other. I am behind him, hugging him.

Yasmin Porat: We all started to run, including the terrorists, we all hid. Lying on the floor, and shots—boom, boom boom! Bullets enter the house in every possible way. And suddenly something heavy, perhaps a mortar, made a big “boom!” in all of the house.

Hadas Dagan: I hear the children screaming, “Help! Please help!”

Recording of Liel and Yanai: Please, I’m begging. Please, please, please. We’re here, please come!

Hadas Dagan: I’ll never forget the children’s screams. How they scream for help. And barrages, again, barrages, barrages, barrages.

Interviewer: Can you tell who is shooting?

Hadas Dagan: From both directions.

Yasmin Porat: And then that commander keeps talking on the phone. And he consults the guys beside him, and after half an hour of very massive shootings, he suddenly says to me, “Yasmin, come, come.

Narrator: In those calls, Hasan, the commander of the force, conducts a negotiation with the police, at the end of which he decides to surrender.

Yasmin Porat: At that time, he suddenly undressed, remained with underwear and an undershirt. And then he hugs me like this on the neck, and starts coming out of the house with me.

[16:45]

And shootings. And I start shouting, “Soldiers, please stop, I am a civilian! We are coming toward you!” I try to make them hear me. And indeed they stop shooting.

At that time, when I come out of the balcony, I see my Tal. I also see Adi and Hadas and someone else. They all lie on their belly, with faces to the floor, protecting themselves, alive.

Hadas Dagan: Suddenly, silence. No shooting from either direction. And I don’t understand why.

Yasmin Porat: We climb the 2 terraces, and they shout things to him on the megaphone. They told him to totally undress, he took off his underwear… during the walk with me. [He] takes off the underwear, the undershirt, the socks, and we reach a situation where we’re climbing on the terrace, he is totally naked. Totally naked, holding me. And we reached the road, and 20 snipers… I tell them, “Please, don’t shoot! Don’t shoot!” They say, “Calm down, we’re not shooting.”

He suddenly gives me a little push in the back, letting me off. The policemen catch me, catch him. And from my perspective, the horror ended.

Narrator: The force interrogates Yasmin, hear that there are 40 terrorists and 14 hostages in the house, and gather information about their locations. The terrorists keep shooting shots, RPG and dozens of grenades. The [Israeli] fighters call relentlessly on the megaphone, trying to get more terrorists to surrender, telling that there was a real concern that they would kill all the hostages. Hasan also called them to come out, and was answered with more shooting.

The force shoots two Lau missiles toward the house.

Hadas Dagan: Again, barrages, barrages, barrages. And Adi tries to raise his head, and I say [to] bring it down. I push his head down. We don’t talk, it’s impossible to talk. And suddenly Adi tells me, “Hadas, Ze’ev is no longer with us.”

We lie on our side, and I look over the shoulder, and I tell him, “Pessi is also no longer with us.”

Yasmin Porat: They have some sort of negotiation with the megaphone, and time passes, and it starts getting dark, and suddenly they bring a tank. And I tell one of the soldiers, “If you shoot shells, wouldn’t it hit hostages?” And he tells me, “No, we’re just hitting the sides, to take down the walls.” Insane exchanges of fire, that I don’t know how someone can possibly survive such a thing.

[19:00]

Narrator: At 19:00, the battle is at its peak. Brigadier General Barak Hiram, who manages the fighting in the area, joins the forces in front of Pessi’s house. One of the [Israeli] fighters slams him on the fighting that is taking place, “Barak, that’s a disgrace.” Barak answers him, “I know.”

The tank fires 2 shells, one to the floor, the other to the roof.

Hadas Dagan: Suddenly, a horrific “boom!” And I can’t move my legs. And my arms drop, I cannot move them. I’m not hugging Adi anymore. And I tell him, “Dushi, I think I’m hurt.” And at that point I’m telling him once more that I love him. It was clear to me that there was a tank here. It was absolutely clear to me. Don’t ask me how, I don’t know. And then came the second boom.

I felt that I was hurt. I looked and I felt that a lot of blood was flowing on me. And I turn my head to see what exactly happened to me, and then I see this size of a hole in Adi’s main artery. [She makes a circle about an inch wide with her fingers.] And I take my thumb and try to block the blood flow. What else could I do? For a moment, he moved, and then he didn’t move anymore. But I lie like that until I realize that I’m already… I’m inside a pool of blood. And there is no point in trying to block the blood flow anymore, and I simply hug him again. And, like, with my face, my hair, all inside a pool of blood.

And I remember hearing one more shot from inside the house. And I don’t hear anything anymore. And I wait for my bullet to come. I don’t know how much time I laid there that way. And I see that… no head is rising back up. And I see the shades, all of them… nobody moved.

[20:15]

Suddenly I heard voices: “There is a hostage that raised her head here.” And I see dots of lights, forehead flashlights, and people with guns in the dark. They surround me. They simply drag me, and I yell at them: “Bring me Dushi! It’s Dushi lying there. Bring me Dushi!” But nobody answers me. They simply seat me in some sort of vehicle, and I hear them talking: “There is a severely injured one here.” And I yell, “I’m not severely injured, it’s Dushi’s blood! Bring him, he lies there!”

While I’m shouting, I hear, “Hadas, is that you?”

Yasmin Porat: She was full of shrapnel, covered with blood. And I ask her, “Hadas, what’s going?” We sit in the truck and she tells me, “Adi is dead. Adi was killed.”

Hadas Dagan: She asks me, “Do you know something about Tal?” And I do know something about Tal, but it’s clear to me that I cannot tell her about Tal, and I tell her, “I don’t know.”

Narrator: At the end of the battle, all the terrorists were eliminated. None of the hostages came out alive from Pessi’s house, except for Hadas.

[Pictures of the deceased]

Hadas Dagan: I am angry. I am very angry. I am angry… for us being abandoned, for us being betrayed, for the fact that we were left alone for so many hours. Adi, to end his life this way…

Narrator: The police and IDF forces have fought with great bravery in Be’eri. Fighters and policemen were killed in battles in the kibbutz. And many more were wounded. And yet, the battle that was conducted over Pessi’s house is a painful example of the complexity of hostage releasing under fire.

Hadas Dagan: It’s clear that in this event lies a very heavy moral dilemma. I don’t want anyone to take this case, with the very hard moral dilemma, and point their finger at the army. It’s quite clear to me that I was hit, and Adi, from the shrapnel of the shell of the tank, because it was at the very same moment.

But go figure. Go figure who of all the people who were there, inside and outside, what they were hit from.

Noam Ben Ami, daughter of the late Hava Ben Ami: We are collecting pieces of information, [but] nobody talks to us in an orderly manner. We don’t really know what happened there. I feel that I owe it to my mother, and also for us to be able to let this thing go and turn to the mourning, and then to rise up and go on with our lives.

Omri Shiproni, nephew of the late Ayala “Aylus” Hetzroni: I think there are many disturbing operational questions here: How did they get here? When did they shoot? Who shot? I don’t know from which fire they were killed. It’s not that important, but it’s the last moments of their lives. So it is important for the families, and it is important to understand, and to learn from the lessons. And we’re waiting for that.

Sharon Cohen, daughter-in-law of the late Pessi Cohen: This is something that must be investigated.

Interviewer, to Hadas Dagan: For you, does it matter how it happened?

Hadas Dagan: Not at all. People there sacrificed their lives to save us. I am also grateful to those who were there and fought for me, but I also understand that there is a dilemma here that cannot be denied.

Omri Shiproni, nephew of the late Ayala “Aylus” Hetzroni: There was also that high-ranking officer who was interviewed about this story.

Excerpt from interview with Brigadier General Birak Hiram: In that block there were about 20 civilians, and I think that the special police force managed to save four of them.

Omri Shiproni, nephew of the late Ayala “Aylus” Hetzroni: He didn’t have the slightest clue, even when he spoke and that was 2 weeks later. He didn’t have a clue about what happened here. The slightest clue, because that’s not the truth.