{"id":1027569,"date":"2026-08-27T14:47:20","date_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:47:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1027569\/"},"modified":"2026-08-27T14:47:20","modified_gmt":"2026-08-27T14:47:20","slug":"they-didnt-ruin-everything-evyatar-david-rebuilds-after-hamas-captivity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/1027569\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018They didn\u2019t ruin everything\u2019: Evyatar David rebuilds after Hamas captivity"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former Gaza hostage Evyatar David<\/a> revealed that the started a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for his recovery efforts, and claimed that the Israeli government was not providing enough financial assistance to the former Hamas captives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI hope the next government will do better. I don\u2019t know who it\u2019s going to be, but I trust they will do better,\u201d he told CNN in an interview on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

He told the American outlet that his recovery is \u201cvery complicated,\u201d and noted that he was a normal person before his time in Hamas captivity.<\/p>\n

\u201cNow it\u2019s very different. It still takes time to process all this,\u201d he said, \u201cI\u2019m trying to understand how to do good rehab and help myself with this.\u201d<\/p>\n

David was 22 when he was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists from the Nova Music Festival during the October 7 massacre. He was held hostage by Hamas for over two years before his release on October 13, 2025.<\/p>\n

\"AA HAMAS propaganda video shows 24-year-old Evyatar David, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, a haunting image of a starved hostage published by subhuman terrorists. (credit: Embassy of Israel to the USA\/X)<\/p>\n

In August 2025, his Hamas captors forced him to film a video<\/a> of him digging his own grave inside a Gaza terror tunnel.<\/p>\n

Evyatar David: ‘We didn’t eat for three months’<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the day the video was filmed, David said in a previous interview with Israeli media that his captors told him and Guy Gilboa-Dalal to strip in order to compare their deteriorating physiques against each other. In the end, David was chosen as the subject of the video because the terrorists thought he looked worse.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all staged, but it relies on the truth; \u00a0we didn\u2019t eat for three months,\u201d he told CNN. \u201cEverything I say and do there, they told me to do it. You can see my body, I could barely move, when I tried to dig the grave, just to hold the shovel was almost impossible, probably the hardest physical thing I ever did.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told Israeli media<\/a> in an earlier interview that he told himself that \u201cit was possible that if I really died, I would be lying in that pit.\u201d<\/p>\n

He added that after the told the terrorists that he almost collapsed, they ignored him. \u201cI could hear them laughing, eating cakes and drinking tea, like there is nobody walking next to them that looks like a skeleton,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He went on to say that the starvation that he and Gilboa-Dalal faced in Gaza caused a great deal of anxiety and conflict between them.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe starvation, beyond the lack of food and physical feeling that you\u2019re always hungry, is the mental feeling that you have nothing to eat, and you don\u2019t know if you will have food in one hour, tomorrow, two days, you have no idea what is going to happen and maybe you are going to die from starvation,\u201d he told CNN.<\/p>\n

In a previous interview with Israeli media, he described the fights he and Gilboa-Dalal got into over rationing the minimal food and water they were given.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe cursed and really screamed,\u201d he said. \u201cIt was pure rage, the kind where everything goes black.\u201d<\/p>\n

After David was forced to film the video, he and Gilboa-Dalal were separated.<\/p>\n

Former hostage tells CNN he has PTSD, mental issues after Gaza captivity<\/strong><\/p>\n

He told CNN that during his captivity, he was held mostly underground. During that time, he said that thoughts of his family and friends were the only thing that kept him going.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you feel at your lowest is the perfect time not to give up, because that\u2019s the point that can break you. Once you understand that and don\u2019t let it break you, you can find yourself in a better place. It doesn\u2019t matter what you have been through; don\u2019t give up when you feel you are going to break because this is where the turning point can be,\u201d he told CNN.<\/p>\n

As he moves forward with recovery, David told CNN that he struggles with PTSD.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt can surprise me any time; one hour I can be fine and happy, and next I can remember something from captivity and get flashbacks,\u201d he told CNN.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wake up at night with nightmares, and it affects me all day after that. It\u2019s very unstable and random.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably, David said that one of his main coping tools after his release has been music.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I feel sad or upset, it\u2019s one of the best things I can do if I want to run from my thoughts and feel calm and unstressed. I don\u2019t know what I would do without music,\u201d he told CNN.<\/p>\n

He also told the American outlet that he will be traveling to the US next month for a series of speaking engagements.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very important for us to keep our stories alive and that people understand and remember what we\u2019ve been through. The world needs to know what happened and can\u2019t forget about it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

This past month, he attended his brother\u2019s wedding and performed a song on the guitar there. He pointed to moments like this, as well as the wedding of former hostage Eliya Cohen<\/a>, as proof that Hamas failed to break their spirits.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey tried to ruin our [lives] and our families\u2019 lives, and eventually they didn\u2019t manage to ruin everything,\u201d He told CNN. \u201cIt\u2019s the biggest closure and a huge moment of victory.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former Gaza hostage Evyatar David revealed that the started a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for his recovery…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1026284,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2],"tags":[6385,4526,4527,6384,21204,99,50],"class_list":["post-1027569","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-gaza-hostages","tag-gaza-strip","tag-hamas","tag-hostage","tag-hostage-deal","tag-israel","tag-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117168024210638741","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1027569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1027569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1026284"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1027569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1027569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1027569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}