Released hostage Avinatan Or doesn’t talk about revenge.
He talks about survival.
After 738 days in brutal Hamas captivity, he came out with four simple, gut-level rules that kept his soul alive. In the short video below, he shares them with a clarity that is leaving people around the world speechless.
Take two minutes to watch the video in this article first.
Then come back and sit with what he says.
“Everything can be taken from you…”
At one point, Avinatan says:
“Everything can be taken from you. Your freedom, your name, your time, your body. But no one can take your mind and your humanity. That is where survival begins.”
This is not theory.
This is a man who lived through nearly two years of darkness saying:
They tried to erase me.
They did not succeed.
His captors controlled his movements, his food, his sleep, even his name. But there was one place they could not enter: his mind and his decision to remain human.
That’s where his four “rules” were born.
Rule #1: Patience
In captivity, time itself becomes a weapon. Days blur. Hope rises and crashes. Every hour feels like a test.
Avinatan’s first rule is patience.
Not passive waiting. Not pretending things are fine.
This is active, stubborn patience: choosing not to give up when nothing changes.
Patience says, “I will outlast this. I will not let you decide who I become.”
For those watching from safety, his patience confronts our own impatience with far smaller trials. We get restless when prayers seem unanswered after days or weeks. He kept going through hundreds of days, stringing one minute of endurance to the next.
Rule #2: Find Common Ground
His second rule is surprising: find common ground… even with your captors.
Finding common ground is not excusing evil or forgetting the horror of what was done. It is refusing to let hatred be the only link between you and the person holding you captive.
Common ground might be a shared language, a joke, a comment about family, a small human detail. Anything that says:
“We are not just roles in this nightmare. We are still human beings in the same room.”
Total dehumanization is part of captivity. When one side stops seeing the other as human at all, anything becomes possible.
By intentionally looking for thin threads of shared humanity, Avinatan protected his own soul. He refused to become what the violence around him tried to make him.
Rule #3: Anger Destroys
If anyone has a “right” to be angry, it’s a hostage locked away for 738 days.
Yet Avinatan’s third rule is painfully honest: anger destroys.
Anger feels powerful at first. It can keep you warm in a freezing situation. But held too long, it turns inward. It distorts judgment. It eats away hope. It can push a person toward despair or reckless choices.
In captivity, he understood that uncontrolled anger wouldn’t hurt his captors nearly as much as it would destroy his own ability to think, to plan, to endure, to stay human.
Letting go of consuming rage is not surrender.
It’s strategy. It’s survival.
Rule #4: Stimulate the Mind
When you are locked in a small space, your world shrinks. Your thoughts can, too.
Avinatan knew he had to keep his mind awake.
“Stimulate the mind” can mean many things in a cell:
Repeating memories
Doing mental math
Praying
Imagining conversations
Recalling books, songs, Scripture
Planning the future, even when it feels impossible
This rule is about guarding that last inner room of freedom.
If your body is trapped but your mind is alive, they have not truly won.
For those on the outside, this is a quiet challenge: What are we feeding our minds? Are we cultivating resilience, faith, and clarity—or just scrolling ourselves into numbness?
How the world is responding to his words
The response to Avinatan’s short message has been intense and deeply emotional.
Some people can’t stop listening:
“I have listened to it on a loop about 100 times.”
Others are treating it like a tool they’ll carry into their own high-pressure moments:
“I plan to listen to this any time I go into a high stakes environment. Remarkable message.”
Therapists and trauma specialists hear echoes of Viktor Frankl’s wisdom from the camps:
“Hauntingly similar to my favorite Viktor Frankl quote: ‘Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.’”
One viewer went even further, calling his message:
“Our generation’s Letter from Birmingham Jail. Eternal and enduring.”
People of faith are responding with blessing and prayer:
“Speechless—hearing this man’s story and his grace by God. I pray he will be blessed now.”
“G-d bless. Am Yisrael Chai. ”
“He’s wise! It saved him… now may Adonai enliven his soul and spirit!”
Others see in him the strength that has carried the Jewish people through centuries of persecution:
“That is, in a nutshell, the ‘how’ to the question: how does the Jewish tribe always prevail.”
Words keep surfacing again and again:
Resilience. Courage. Strength of mind. HERO.
Of course, not every comment is kind. Some twist his suffering into attacks on Israel itself. That, too, is part of the world he’s walking back into: a world where even the testimony of a former hostage can be denied, mocked, or used as a weapon.
But the overwhelming chorus is clear:
People recognize something rare in Avinatan’s voice—
a combination of pain, clarity, and unbroken humanity.
Lessons We Can Carry Out of His Story
Most of us will never face what Avinatan endured. Thank God.
But his four rules shine a light on every kind of suffering:
Long illnesses
Broken relationships
Grief that doesn’t quickly lift
Seasons where God feels silent
The ongoing trauma and uncertainty facing Israelis and Jews worldwide
In all these, the temptations are similar:
To despair when we don’t see a way out
To cling to rage until it poisons us
To stop seeing the other side as human
To let our minds and hearts go numb
His testimony pushes back:
Be patient. This moment is not the whole story.
Look for human connection. Even in conflict, do not surrender your ability to see the other as human.
Refuse to let anger rule you. Feel it, name it—but don’t let it define you.
Keep your mind and soul awake. Read, pray, remember, learn, think.
And over it all, his central truth:
“No one can take your mind and your humanity. That is where survival begins.”
Watch. Remember. Respond.
If you haven’t yet, scroll back to the video in this article and listen carefully to his voice.
Then ask yourself:
Where do I need this kind of patience?
Where am I letting anger quietly destroy me?
How can I protect my own humanity, even when I feel under attack?
How can I remember and advocate for those still in captivity and for their families waiting for them?
Avinatan Or walked through nearly unimaginable darkness and came back with four simple rules and one unshakable conviction:
They can take almost everything.
They cannot take your mind.
They cannot take your humanity.
That’s where survival—and maybe, eventually, healing—begins.
