Captivity survivors speak: Waking up and seeing a bed, not a tunnel – it’s paradise

Two survivors of Hamas captivity, Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David, spoke on Tuesday at the Israel Hayom Conference in New York about the impossible conditions they endured in Hamas tunnels.

“Waking up every morning and opening your eyes and seeing a bed and not a tunnel, it’s blessed. For us, we’re in paradise,” Evyatar said in the interview with Israel Hayom’s Yoav Limor.

The two have been friends since they were a year and a half old and spent most of their captivity together. “Evyatar and I have truly been friends since we were a year and a half old. Where do you find seven-year-old friends who stay close while living in two different cities? But in captivity, it became something else. It’s beyond saying brothers, friends, family,” Guy said.

Evyatar described the survival-based friendship that developed between them: “Everything you get, you split in two. Many times he would bring me things, mostly he brought me things, I won’t lie. It’s part of it, everything, everything.”

During the period when Guy suffered severe shoulder-muscle deterioration, Evyatar helped him with everything. “He would pull my pants down when I went to the toilet and pull them up when I came back. He lifted my arm, cleaned my armpit with a wipe, and lowered it again because I simply couldn’t move my shoulders,” Guy said.

The two described the horrific captivity conditions: “We ate a lot of lentils. We also ate a little rice when we got some. It was an entirely flat plate. You get a few legumes and a tiny piece of pita, nothing more,” Evyatar said.

They described four mattresses placed side by side next to a sewage pit. “I’m not comfortable saying this: It was a pit of feces, and we had to dig it. Inside that hole, worms grew and became flies that landed on the food we ate,” Guy said.

Guy chose to reveal that he was sexually assaulted in captivity. “I was assaulted twice by the same terrorist who guarded me. I was stuck there in that same tunnel, I had nowhere to run, and I didn’t know how much further it could go,” he said.

He explained why he chose to speak publicly: “I want people to know it’s not shameful to talk about this. Many people go through it. Not only on television, to talk about it with a therapist, someone who can help. It’s very important for me that people who went through these things know they’re not alone.”

Both acknowledged that they cried a lot in captivity. “Crying releases something at the end of the day, it’s important,” Evyatar said. He described a breaking point after two exchange deals: “After Tal [Shoham] and Omer [Wenkert] left, I told Guy: ‘Listen, I’m not going to see my family.’ I went into panic, and that moment broke me.”

Guy revealed that for a year and a half, he did not know what had happened to his brother, who was with him at the Nova Music Festival, from where he was kidnapped on October 7, 2023. “Just thinking about what could have happened to him it destroyed me,” he said.

They were not exposed to the outside world and when they were, it was mostly through Al Jazeera. “They would tell us, ‘Your families aren’t fighting for you, the army is looking for you to kill you, the government doesn’t want you.’ It was endless brainwashing,” Guy said.

Evyatar emphasized US President Donald Trump’s role in their release. “When Trump was elected, we were sure it would help us and it did. It’s largely because of him, a lot because of him that we’re here. I don’t know how much longer we could have stayed there without him,” he said.

At the end of the interview, Michal Gerstler, EL AL’s Director of Communications and Government Affairs, came on stage with a surprise.

“For the past two years, EL AL has been the only airline operating l the air bridge to Israel,” she said. “When the war started, all foreign airlines stopped coming to Israel and canceled their flights, and EL AL was the only airline that flew Israelis to and from Israel.” She explained that the company flew families of hostages, diplomatic delegations, wounded soldiers for medical treatment abroad, and conducted rescue flights from around the world.

Gerstler announced that EL AL is gifting the two captivity survivors tickets to Thailand, Japan, or any destination they choose.

“We heard your dream was to travel to Thailand, and that you talk a lot about Japan, and we decided that the least we can do for you, from EL AL, after everything you have endured, is to give you tickets with love,” she said. “If anyone deserves to feel the most at home in the world, it’s both of you.”