“I told myself that I’m a dead man. So every second, every minute, every hour, every day, it will be a gift. So that was my technique. And you never lose the hope. You cannot,” Yair Horn shares with an audience Jan. 14 at the Pentecostals of Dayton Church Center, of his mindset over the 498 days he languished in Hamas captivity after his abduction Oct. 7, 2023 from Kibbutz Nir Oz.
His talk in Dayton was presented by Christians United for Israel, an evangelical Christian organization that advocates and raises funds for the Jewish state. Pentecostals of Dayton’s pastor, Wylie Rhinehart Jr., was recently named CUFI’s coordinator for Ohio.
“Kibbutz Nir Oz is near the Gaza Strip. From my porch, you can even see the first village in Gaza,” says Yair, who was the first of his family to make aliyah (immigrate to Israel) from Argentina and has lived on the kibbutz since 2014. Nir Oz was home to about 420 people.
“That 7th of October began almost like a regular morning for me because we had the first red alert, which is the alarm we hear when the terrorists shoot off rockets,” he says. “Sadly, once or twice a year, we have what we call ‘little drops of rain,’ which is the rockets.”
This article was originally published by The Dayton Jewish Observer. To continue reading, visit daytonjewishobserver.org.