‘The tunnels shook’: Former hostage Eitan Mor gives first public account of his captivity

“I thought to myself: What do I do now? I started singing songs by Eyal Golan, and Ziv joined me. For a few moments, we forgot we were in Gaza.”

By World Israel News Staff

For the first time since his release, former hostage Eitan Mor spoke publicly on Tuesday evening, describing the ordeal he endured during more than two years in Hamas captivity. Mor addressed a large gathering at an event hosted by Economy and Industry Minister Nir Barkat under the banner “Unity and Victory,” held in Tel Aviv as part of a Chanukah celebration for thousands of Likud activists and public figures.

Standing before the crowd, Mor said he spent the entire war in northern Gaza and shared memories of the early weeks of captivity. “For the first two months of the war, I sat in a tunnel with Ziv Berman. And as you know, the IDF entered Gaza City with full force at the start of the war,” he told the audience.

Mor described the fear that gripped him during one of the nights underground. “At one point, the tunnel shook and we thought it would collapse,” he said, recalling how the explosions above grew so intense that the entire chamber trembled around them. “I thought to myself: What do I do now? I started singing songs by Eyal Golan, and Ziv joined me. For a few moments, we forgot we were in Gaza.”

Reflecting on how he stayed grounded through the darkest stretches of captivity, Mor said, “In the difficult periods in captivity, I always thought about the soldiers who fell in the war, those murdered on October 7, the bereaved families and the wounded. I wanted so much to go home, but I knew the war was necessary to restore security for everyone, so I would say thank you that I stayed alive one more day. It really helped me.”

Mor was freed on October 13, 2025, after 738 days in captivity, as part of phase one of President Donald Trump’s plan to end the war in Gaza. He was 23 when he was abducted from the Supernova music festival on October 7, 2023. Terrorists murdered 344 people at the site and kidnapped dozens more.

According to his father, Mor spent his first year in Gaza in complete isolation. For nearly two years he was moved through roughly 40 different hideouts in Gaza City – some above ground and many below. He endured long stretches of extreme hunger, surviving at times on a few spoonfuls of rice each day.

His father recounted one moment when Eitan managed to steal a piece of pita bread and paid a brutal price for it. “The terrorist holding him beat him severely,” he said, adding that the person who intervened was the captor’s wife, “who screamed at her husband to stop beating him.”

Mor’s appearance marked a rare and powerful moment of testimony from a survivor of Hamas captivity. His message to the crowd was simple: gratitude for life, pride in Israel’s strength, and faith in the country’s future.

Eitan MorNir Barkatreleased hostages