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While the UN devotes its human rights operations to the demonization of the democratic state of Israel above all others and condemns the United States more often than the vast majority of non-democracies around the world, the voices of real victims around the world must be heard.
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A still of hostage Evyatar David taken from a Hamas propaganda video (left) next to photos of him in captivity in February (center), and before his capture in 2023. (Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
Palestinian Authority/Gaza, August 2, 2025
In video, Hamas forces hostage Evyatar David to dig what he fears will be his own grave
Original source
Hostage Evyatar David appeared pale and emaciated in a video that his family approved for publication on Saturday, a day after the Hamas terror group released the shocking footage of him. His family said it showed he was being deliberately starved.
The Hamas footage, more of which was approved by the family for publication in the course of Saturday, includes David speaking in a weak voice, in remarks likely dictated to him by his captors, and shows him digging what he says he fears will be his own grave.
The video was approved for publication as US special envoy Steve Witkoff told hostages’ families that Washington supports a comprehensive Gaza ceasefire-hostage agreement and would no longer seek “piecemeal deals,” and is opposed to expanding the fighting in Gaza. The effort was complicated, he said, but he believed it would ultimately succeed.
Witkoff made the comments during a visit to Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, where hostages’ relatives and hundreds of supporters rallied after Hamas put out the video of David and Palestinian Islamic Jihad published similarly harrowing footage of hostage Rom Braslavski.
Initially on Saturday, David’s family approved for publication a still image from the new footage, which was shared alongside a screenshot from a Hamas propaganda video released in February and a photograph of him before he was kidnapped from the Reim-area Nova music festival during the terror onslaught of October 7, 2023.
It then approved the publication of part of the footage, in which David is seen in a tunnel with a ceiling roughly as high as he is tall, crossing off dates on a calendar on the tunnel’s wall. He is unkempt and unshaven, and appears skeletal even in comparison with the February video, which was filmed during the last ceasefire-hostage deal with Hamas, as Israel increased the flow of aid into Gaza. That deal collapsed in March.
The family later permitted Israeli media to publish the full video.
“Today is July 27, at 12:00 p.m., I don’t know what I’m going to eat,” he says. “I haven’t eaten for a few days in a row.”
“I am in a very, very difficult situation, for a long time, for a few months,” he says, describing the lack of food and water, and stating that his captors are giving him what they can.
“This isn’t fiction, this is real,” David adds.
He says his diet consists mainly of some lentils and beans, pointing to the calendar and noting days he has eaten, and several days in a row when he hasn’t received food.
He says he has been in “very, very, very difficult conditions for a very long time, a few months already… You can see how thin I am…”
In the middle of the video, the person behind the camera hands him a can: “This can is for two days. This whole can is for two days so that I don’t die,” David says.
Addressing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, David says he feels, “I have been completely abandoned by you, my prime minister, who is supposed to worry about me and all the prisoners held by the enemy.”
Hamas labels the hostages it took as “prisoners.”
At the end of the video, David describes himself digging what he fears will be his own grave inside the tunnel, as he is filmed doing so. He states that he is feeling “weaker and weaker” by the day and heading toward death.
“This is the grave I think I’m going to be buried in,” he says. “Time is running out. You are the only ones who can end this.”
The new Hamas videos were sent as the United Nations and other aid agencies have warned of mounting hunger in Gaza as a result of Israel’s aid policies. Israel has rejected the accusations of starvation as Hamas propaganda. During the Hostages Square rally on Saturday, the mother of a hostage said a senior government official dismissed as Hamas propaganda her concern that her son was “skin and bones.”
In a statement on the new footage, David’s family said: “We are forced to witness our dear son and brother Evyatar being deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza — a living skeleton buried alive. Our son has only a few days left to live in his current condition.”
“Hamas is using our son, Evyatar, as a living experiment in a disgusting hunger campaign,” the family said, demanding that humanitarian aid entering Gaza also reach David and urging “Israeli media to stop pumping Hamas propaganda.”
“Our Evyatar is being starved for the Hamas terror group’s propaganda purposes,” continued the family. “There is no limit to the pain the Hamas terror group causes the hostages and the residents of Gaza.”
“We are begging the government of Israel, the people of Israel, every nation of the world, and especially President Trump,” the family said. “You must do everything in your power, by any means necessary, to save Evyatar and Guy [Gilboa-Dalal, with whom he has been held] and the rest of the hostages. They urgently need proper food and medical care so their lives can be saved.”
A senior Israeli source was quoted on Channel 12 on Saturday night saying that the Hamas captors are not short of food, and are deliberately starving the hostages. “We know from testimony of returned hostages and from our own information that the hostages’ captors don’t look like [the emaciated hostages],” the official says. “This is deliberate starvation, not only to abuse the hostages themselves but also to abuse their families and the public.”...
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