Israeli hostages forced to watch as other captives set free

Hamas released a propaganda video of Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David forced to watch from a van Saturday as other hostages were released.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Two hostages were forced by Hamas to watch its choreographed ceremony in which three Israelis were released Saturday in Rafah and were filmed begging repeatedly for their own freedom.

Looking extremely gaunt, Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, dressed identically in light sweaters in the freezing cold, can be seen in a van first covering their eyes with their hands in disbelief as they watch Omer Shem Tov, Tal Shoham and Omer Wenkert up on a stage being forced to speak before being taken to Red Cross vehicles.

Sitting across from well-armed terrorists, the two then face the camera and say, “Please save us, bring us home, I’m begging you.”

They are cruelly asked in Hebrew, “How do you feel right now?” and they repeat with tears in their voices, “Please let us go home. We’ve been here 500 days, please save us… we want to be like them,” nodding at the Israelis being humiliated in the handover ceremony.

The door of the van is then slammed shut, and they say to the camera in separate shots that have been obviously pieced together, “[Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, you’ve finished us off, you killed us here… We need proper negotiations, simply sign on a deal and finish this, we’ve just seen our friends released after 500 days, [if you use] military pressure, we’ll all die…. People of Israel, don’t stop demonstrating, it is so hard for us here.”

Right-wing members of the government have been demanding that the IDF return to crush Hamas instead of agreeing to a Phase 2 where the IDF would fully withdraw from Gaza in return for the 63 remaining hostages, only 27 of whom are still alive.

Galia David, Evyatar’s mother, was interviewed Sunday by several radio stations after the two- minute clip was released.

She told Army Radio that while “it was obvious that he had been staged,” her son was still obviously “frightened and frustrated” and that “his whole body language expressed distress.”

David was relieved that her son was at least with his close friend in captivity, saying that it was a “consolation” that he and Gilboa-Dalal were “alive and together,” and adding that “I have no doubt that they give each other a great deal of strength.”

“But I see the soul through his eyes, and he is tormented; my son is tormented. He is pale and thin, but we keep saying – the body can be healed, the soul is much more difficult,” she said.

“We must save them, and as quickly as possible. If it doesn’t happen now, I don’t know how much longer they can hang on there.”

On Channel 12, she also slammed Hamas’s malice, noting that the terrorists “let him look at his friends who were with him in the tunnels and are going home, and then sent back to the darkness to wander in the tunnels when he doesn’t know what’s happening to him. This is simply cruelty.”

Hamas terrorists abducted Gilboa-Dalal and David from the Nova festival on October 7, 2023, among 249 others during their invasion of Israel in which they slaughtered 1,200 people, the vast majority of them civilians.