Evyatar David by Hamas video screengrab / Hostages and Missing Families Forum
Hamas released a harrowing video Aug. 1 showing 24-year-old Israeli hostage Evyatar David, visibly emaciated and digging what he called his own grave inside a tunnel in Gaza.
In the nearly five-minute clip, David marks a calendar to tally what little he’s eaten, saying he hasn’t had any food for several days.
Holding up a can of beans he says he just received, David states, “This can is for two days. This whole can is for two days so that I don’t die.”
David, an Israeli civilian kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, has been held captive in Gaza for nearly two years, according to an Aug. 2 statement from the Embassy of Israel to the US.
At one point in the video, David stands in a pit clutching a shovel: “This is the grave I think I’m going to be buried in. Time is running out.”
The video surfaced amid mounting warnings of famine in Gaza. A July 30 United Nations report said food shortages in Gaza have deteriorated to famine conditions, while the region is also approaching “man-made” drought conditions.
On Aug. 4, the Hostages and Missing Families Forum warned that hostages in Hamas captivity face “an immediate risk of death,” The Times of Israel reported.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Hamas of “deliberately starving our hostages” and filming them “in a cynical and evil manner,” in an Aug. 2 statement posted to X.
David’s family issued a statement through the Hostages Families Forum, saying they were being forced to watch their son and brother “deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas’ tunnels in Gaza — a living skeleton, buried alive.”
“The deliberate starvation of our son as part of a propaganda campaign is one of the most horrifying acts the world has seen,” the family added.
The Israeli Embassy to the US demanded the immediate release of all hostages, adding that they must be given food and medical care.
“The only people being deliberately starved and tortured in Gaza are the hostages held in Hamas’ dungeons,” the embassy said in the Aug. 2 statement.
It added, “Meanwhile, Hamas terrorists gorge themselves on stolen humanitarian aid, flaunting food and weapons in videos filmed from the tunnels.”
