'Still with me': Evyatar David recalls captivity, being forced to dig his grave in first interview

ByMIRIAM SELA-EITAMJULY 31, 2026 04:48The “thin, young man” in captivity digging his grave is still a part of who he is, former hostage Evyatar David shared in an interview with Channel 12’s Uvda published on Thursday.David, accompanied by fellow former hostage and childhood best friend Guy Gilboa-Dalal, recalled the moments of his kidnapping by Hamas on October 7 and his time in captivity.David and Gilboa-Dalal were abducted from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. He was held hostage by Hamas until October 13, 2025.Two friends of theirs, Captain Ron Tzarfati and Idan Haramaty, were murdered at the festival by Hamas.The four of them had arrived at Nova relatively early, David shared, and “until 6:29 a.m., it was an incredible party. Then intense gunfire began right next to us, and my legs simply took over and started running.”Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, July 31, 2026. (credit: Screenshot/Channel 12/Uvda)“It was as though I had no control,” he said, recalling seeing Tzarfati, Haramaty, and Gilboa-Dalal and wondering why they weren’t running.“The gunfire started getting closer,” David went on. “The only thing you can hear is your own breathing. Some guy inside the bushes screamed a curse at the top of his lungs, and then you hear a burst of gunfire, followed by silence.”In captivity togetherGilboa-Dalal and David were soon reunited inside a pickup truck used by Hamas.“It was like we said in captivity,” David said. “‘At least we are in captivity together.’ It was the same thing. We shared the same fate.”On the evening of October 7, David and Gilboa-Dalal were taken to the first apartment they were held in inside Gaza.“At first, they seated each of us in a different corner of the room,” David shared, explaining that for two weeks, their captors forbade them from speaking and looking at each other.David said that all he’d wanted to do was to see that Gilboa-Dalal was all right. “I wanted to see your eyes,” he said.He explained that they were given little to nothing to eat in captivity, detailing multiple times he and Gilboa-Dalal had fallen into arguments over rationing the minimal food and water they were given.“We cursed and really screamed,” he said. “It was pure rage, the kind where everything goes black.”“Do you remember what we used to say? Let’s agree to disagree. It solves everything,” David asked, before adding, “Although I still think you used too much water.”Filming Hamas's propaganda videoWhile they were starved the entire time they were in captivity, David explained that the extreme starvation did not start until three months before Hamas decided to film the video of him digging his own grave.A 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)“We had already reached the point where we did not speak much in order to conserve energy, and where we calculated every time we stood up,” David shared in the interview. “When you want to get up and are seconds away from fainting, you have to stand still for about two minutes just to breathe and avoid losing consciousness, because your body has atrophied.On the day the video was filmed, David said, their captors had told the two of them to strip in order to compare their deteriorating physiques against each other. In the end, David was chosen as the subject of the video.On the way to the “set,” which was set up in a separate tunnel than the one they were being held in, David recalled passing through a larger room and smelling “the tea they were making and the cakes, and I could hear them chewing.”“A skeleton was walking beside them while they indulged in cake and tea.”Upon reaching the tunnel, David said the instructions given to him by his Hamas captors were simple.“They simply told me, ‘All right, take it. There is a shovel here. Get inside. This is going to be your grave.’ From my perspective, it looked like I was on my way to my death,” he said. “I dug that grave, and doing it was almost physically impossible. I told myself that it was possible that if I really died, I would be lying in that pit.”'I was alive every second'After the video was made, Hamas made the decision to separate David and Gilboa-Dalal. The two recalled the fear and panic of those moments, pleading with their captors to remain together. “We had already been together in captivity for a year and 10 months. We could not survive it separately now,” Gilboa-Dalal said.David echoed the words: “I burst into tears there. It was a moment... a kind of panic attack. I remember being afraid that I would lose my mind.”“There is something people sometimes say to me, ‘Blessed is He who revives the dead,’” David said, sharing a conversation he had with clinical psychologist Glenn Cohen, who had accompanied the hostages during debriefings after their return to Israel.“I cannot stand it,” he said. “I was alive every second. People think captivity is death, but there you want to live even more.”“One day, I got out. I was released from captivity. But the things I went through there continue to stay with me. Everything people see is a small percentage of what we experience every day.”“There is a great deal of difficulty, dreams and nightmares at night,” he said. “In the end, the way people came to know me, through that terrible video, is so different from how I look today. But ultimately, that thin young man with the shovel, digging his grave, is still with me.”Danya Saperstein contributed to this report.Follow us on Google