Inside Arbel Yehud’s  nightmare: "I had to kill mice so they wouldn't bite me" 

At the end of last January, Arbel Yehud was released from Hamas captivity after spending 482 days there alone. The moments of terror that Yehud went through at the time of her liberation, when she was surrounded by an angry Gaza mob with a concrete threat to her life make up some of the harshest images of the war.

Since her release, Yehud's family has sought to preserve her privacy and give her the time and space she needs to begin the long rehabilitation process. After remaining silent, Yehud was interviewed by Lucy Aharish in a special program that will be broadcast today (Monday) on Reshet 13.

"I don't think there's a word to describe the fear, of the noise of the fighting," says Arbel Yehud, wearing a T-shirt with pictures of her partner Ariel Cuneo and his brother David, who are still in Hamas captivity. "From the bombings, from the planes, from those few seconds of noise before the missile landed and gunfights. I have no word for it, this fear... It's paralyzing, it's terrifying. You don't know if you'll continue to breathe in the next minute, and where it will catch you and in what situation, what you'll do at that moment."

Regarding the harsh sanitary conditions in captivity, Yehud said: "Mice run around non-stop. There were a few that the terrorists killed and there was one mouse that bit me on the finger. But, towards the end, I found myself smashing them against the wall so that they wouldn't reach me. I would crush them until they stopped moving."

Arbel and her partner, Ariel Kunio, were kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nir Oz. The puppy they had adopted a few days earlier was shot and murdered by Hamas terrorists. The couple were separated about three hours after the abduction, and while Yehud was released as part of a deal, Ariel and his older brother David Cuneo, along with 57 other abductees, are still languishing in Hamas cellars.