The brother of Israeli hostage Evyatar David called on the world to “come together” to secure his freedom following the publication of a video in which the emaciated captive was shown purportedly digging his own grave.
David, 24, is one of 251 people taken captive by Hamas and its allies during their October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel, which triggered the war in Gaza.
Last week, Hamas released propaganda videos showing him severely undernourished and visibly weakened, including one in which he digs with a shovel in the sandy floor of a tunnel, saying he is preparing his grave.
“The world must come together now… and demand his release. He must be saved!” his brother Ilay David said in an interview Tuesday with AFP in Kfar Saba, near Tel Aviv, at the family home where they both were raised.
The recent videos of Evyatar David and fellow hostage Rom Braslavski have sparked outrage and fear for their safety among Israelis, as well as condemnations of Hamas from abroad.
In captivity for nearly 22 months, David has since become a symbol of the ongoing ordeal of the 20 hostages believed to still be alive among the 49 held by Hamas.
Red and black posters demanding his release hang on the walls of the family’s living room, the same posters that plaster walls across Israel in solidarity with the hostages.
On February 23, Hamas had released a video showing David sitting in a vehicle alongside another hostage as they were forced to watch a staged ceremony marking the release of three other captives during a brief ceasefire that later collapsed.
“That was the last sign of life we had from him,” Ilay David told AFP.
“We thought then that was the worst possible cruelty,” he added. “We didn’t think (Hamas) could go any lower.”
“These new images show just how urgent it is to get him out of that tunnel.”
– Unable to watch –
Ilay admitted he had only seen still images from the latest five-minute Hamas video showing his brother.
“I wasn’t able to watch it or listen to it. Seeing it with my mother would completely wreck us,” he told AFP.
Evyatar “is my little brother. We grew up together, played music together. I was raised to protect my younger siblings,” he continued.
“He hasn’t given up — and neither will we, until he comes home.”
In a statement, the David family warned that their son “has only a few days left to live in his current condition”, expressing outrage at the “deliberate starvation, torture, and abuse” he is enduring.
Evyatar David was abducted along with his childhood friend Guy Gilboa-Dalal from the Nova music festival near the Gaza border, where more than 370 people were killed and 44 taken hostage.
The two friends spent more than eight months in Hamas tunnels with Tal Shoham, a man abducted from a kibbutz and released in February after more than 500 days in captivity.
– Only in a cemetery –
In an interview with AFP on Tuesday, Shoham, now 40 years old, described the torment the three hostages endured together.
“We suffered from severe starvation. I lost 30 kilograms (66 pounds) during my captivity, Guy and Evyatar each lost at least 25. And now, I believe they’ve lost another 15 to 20 kilos.”
He recalled the cruelty of their captors, who ate meat in front of them while giving them as little as a single portion of pita bread a day.
The three captives were held inside an apartment until June 2024, when they were moved into a tunnel.
“I thought I had already experienced the worst, but I was wrong,” Shoham said of his time underground.
He said he recognised the tunnel shown in the latest video as the one where he spent months on a mattress, haunted by “the hunger, the humidity and the inability to breathe”.
In the most recent footage, Shoham said he could see in David’s eyes that “he has lost all hope”.
“I used to imagine their return — the tears, the reunion, the hugs,” he said, referring to David and Gilboa-Dallal.
“But today… I don’t know anymore,” he admitted. “Maybe I’ll only see them again in a cemetery.”
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