Former Hostage Maxim Harkin Recounts 738 Days in Hamas Captivity

Former hostage and IDF reserve officer Maxim Harkin shared details on Monday about his captivity and how he gathered information on Israel through local broadcasts. "On Al Jazeera, we would see politicians' speeches; that is how we pieced together fragments of information," he said.

"We were chained and forced to watch Al Jazeera. They broadcasted a statement claiming that all hostages were fated to spend many years in Hamas captivity. In retrospect, I realized the speaker was the Chief of Staff and that the sentence was truncated, but that was the only piece of information we managed to extract for two years."

"Seven days before I was abducted, I was visiting Russia," continued the hostage survivor, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival. "On October 6 at noon, I was washing my car and had a gut feeling not to go to the party. A friend called and convinced me. The festival was well-organized, with police presence, and 3,000 smiling, happy people. It was my first music festival ever."

"At 6:29 AM, a rain of missiles poured down. For me, it was clear a war had started, not just an operation or escalation. The next day I was supposed to report for reserve duty with my friend Matthias, who was murdered at the festival."

Maxim Harkin is an IDF reserve officer who survived 738 days in Hamas captivity after being abducted from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, and returned to Israel in October 2025.