Former hostage Yosef Haim Ohana, who endured nearly two years in Hamas captivity in Gaza, made an emotional visit to the Gush Katif Museum together with his father, Avi, where the two were given a look back at the thriving Jewish communities that once stood in the Gaza Strip.

Museum director Shai Gefen led the visit together with Avner Franklin, whose daughter Michal Franklin was murdered in a 2002 terror attack in French Hill, Yerushalayim. The Ohana family viewed photographs and exhibits recalling the communities, agriculture and Jewish life that existed in Gush Katif before the 2005 Disengagement.

For Ohana, seeing that history after his own harrowing experience inside Gaza carried particular meaning.

Speaking with Arutz Sheva during the visit, he described the emotions as deeply mixed. “There are many mixed emotions. To see what beauty, how Jews lived there and how much the land flourished; and on the other hand to see how the place looks now, it really hurts.”

But Ohana also described the museum as a place of remembrance, telling Arutz Sheva that remembering the past is something the Jewish people know how to do well. He said the museum preserves the story of an especially significant chapter of Jewish life in Gaza and noted that he had always been interested in learning what had taken place there.

Perhaps his most striking comments came when reflecting on the years he spent as a hostage.

“If you would tell me: ‘Yosef, take any two years of your life, when you were a baby, in elementary school, in high school, or when you were a hostage, which would you give up?’ The last years I would give up are my two years in Gaza,” Ohana said.

The visit also brought back a deeply personal moment shared by Ohana and his father following his release.

Avi recalled what he calls “the miracle of the Four Species.” Before Yosef Haim was taken captive, his father had given him a bracha that the zechus of the Arba Minim should protect him from mortal danger.

Then, after Yosef Haim finally returned home near the end of Sukkos, Avi was able to place the Arba Minim into his son’s hands and watch him perform the mitzvah himself.

For the father and son, the moment represented an emotional closing of a circle — a bracha given before captivity and a mitzvah ultimately performed together after Yosef Haim returned home alive.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)