Segev Kalfon meeting his family onboard the helicopter en route to the hospital. © Photo: IDF Spokesperson
In an interview aired Saturday on Ynet and Channel 12, the Israeli–Portuguese freed hostage Segev Kalfon, who was kidnapped from the Nova festival on October 7, said “I wanted the war to continue, to finish Hamas, even if it cost me my life”.
Kalfon, from a traditional Sephardic family of North African origin, recounted that around the 270th day of the war the hostages’ daily torment worsened dramatically. “The terrorists who came every day to beat us increased the violence,” he said.
The worsened conditions began when Kalfon — along with fellow hostages Yosef-Haim Ohana and Maxim Herkin, who had been held together — was moved from a private home to a tunnel. There they joined hostages Bar Kuperstein, Ohad Ben Ami, and Elkana Bohbot.
“That’s where the abuse began — I’d even call it torture,” Segev recalled. “They would beat us with all [their] force, they would put rings on [their fingers] in order to leave marks. There was hemorrhaging on my neck and back.”
He said the captors also deliberately starved them, even before the beatings escalated.
“They starved us,” Kalfon said. “I would see what they ate: a bowl of cheese, a bowl of fava beans, a package of saj — saj is like a thin pita. And they’d eat a lot. We got one saj. The hunger starts eating your body. In the morning, he’d come and bring us a tomato — that was breakfast. He’d cut it into four pieces; he’d eat one slice and divide the other three among us.”
“One day, I see a new guy, angry,” Kalfon recalled. “He turns on Al Jazeera and says, ‘You see this? Your army killed three of our civilians. We in Hamas decided to kill three hostages. You choose which of you will be executed.’”
Kalfon said the Hamas guard then cocked his weapon and aimed it at them. “We’re terrified, frozen, don’t know what to do,” Kalfon said. “I already see the bullet about to fire. Then he says, ‘Okay, I see you’re not choosing now.’ They sat us three across from three, staring into each other’s eyes, realizing that three of us won’t live. We came here six — only three will leave alive.”
Kalfon recalled that the terrorist spent hours tormenting them, repeatedly rearranging which men he marked as wounded and which he marked for execution — a cruel exercise that kept them terrified and uncertain who would survive.
He told Channel 12 that at one point, the ordeal hardened his resolve against Hamas.
“I told myself that to end this phenomenon called Hamas, I had to sacrifice myself for the country,” Kalfon said. “I wanted the war to continue, to finish them off. Even if it cost me my life. Such evil has to be destroyed, even if I give my life.”
