Hamas published a video Saturday showing Israeli hostages Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal being forced to watch as other captives were freed and begging to be saved as well.
The footage, described by family members as “sickening,” and the continued use of hostages as pawns for Hamas propaganda, sparked anger and revulsion in Israel, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu citing the terror group’s “humuliation” of hostages in announcing a decision to delay the release of Palestinian prisoners slated for Saturday until such displays end.
The Hamas footage shows the two men in a vehicle, watching a handover ceremony for Omer Shem Tov, Eliya Cohen and Omer Wenkert in the central Gaza district of Nuseirat and pleading for Netanyahu to secure their release.
The two best friends are seen in the video looking from inside the vehicle toward the stage where the ceremony was being held. They repeatedly cover their faces with their hands.
“Save us please,” the two repeat several times over the course of the two-minute video, their expressions and exaggerated displays of dismay widely thought to have been the result of coaching from their armed captors, some of whom can also be seen in the footage.
The video was the first sign of life from David made public since the pair were abducted from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. Gilboa-Dalal’s family had last received word that he was still alive in June.
“This is the best sign of life I could ask for, but on the other hand there’s nothing more cruel,” Gilboa-Dalal’s father Ilan Dalal told Channel 12 news. “It’s not surprising, because it’s Hamas, but it’s a new level of torture.”
The families of both men authorized Israeli media to publish the footage, with Ilan Dalal expressing hopes that doing so could help win support to continue a fragile ceasefire in Gaza and secure their release.
“They forced them to watch their friends being released and then returned them to the tunnels,” he said in remarks carried by Israel Hayom. “They can’t continue. It’s simply inhumane.”
He noted that his son seemed thinner and scared, but did not appear to have visible injuries from his ordeal.
David’s sister, Yeela, called Hamas “monsters” after watching the clip, saying on Instagram: “They are alive. They put both of them this morning in the most horrifying and evil situation they could be. There is no limit to the messed-up cynicism of these monsters. I admire you, my brothers.”
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum said the video was an “act of psychological torture” and a “sickening display of cruelty”.
“Every second counts. Our loved ones are suffering, tortured, and dying in the dark, suffocating tunnels of Hamas,” the group said in a statement.
“This nightmare cannot be allowed to continue for one more day,” it said, urging Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump to reach an arrangement to bring home all the remaining captives from Gaza.
New York Representative Elise Stefanik, a Trump loyalist in line to be the US ambassador to the UN, said relatives of both David and Gilboa-Dalal were in attendance at the conservative CPAC conference in Washington at a speech by Trump when the video came out.
“Hamas’ evil depravity knows no bounds,” she wrote on X.
Guy Gilboa-Dalal’s brother Gal Dalal took part in a CPAC panel on Thursday with other relatives of hostages.
Gal had met up with Guy, 22 at the time, at the Nova rave on October 7, having just enough time to take a selfie together in the early morning before the attack began.
The two were separated, with Gal managing to escape by running for hours, but Guy being kidnapped.
David, 23 at the time, was also taken hostage from the party. Both were spotted tied up in a tunnel in footage that emerged from Gaza that day. Israel says 251 people were kidnapped and some 1,200 killed during the massive Hamas-led onslaught across southern Israel that sparked the war in Gaza.
Six hostages were released on Saturday: Tal Shoham, Shem Tov, Wenkert, Cohen and Avera Mengistu and Hisham al-Sayed — the latter two having been held in Gaza for around a decade after entering of their own accord.
The six were the last living hostages slated to be released under the first stage of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage release deal. David and Gilboa-Dalal would be included with hostages set to be freed in a second stage, though details have yet to be worked out between Israel and Hamas via international mediation.
Shortly after the video emerged, Netanyahu’s office announced that he had decided to delay the planned release of some 600 Palestinian inmates until Hamas ends its practice of subjecting hostages to “humiliating ceremonies.”
“In light of the repeated violations by Hamas — including the ceremonies that demean our hostages and the cynical use of our hostages for propaganda purposes — it has been decided to delay the release of terrorists planned for yesterday until the next release of hostages is guaranteed, and without the degrading ceremonies,” a statement from the Prime Minister’s Office read.
The statement came following a visceral outpouring of anger in Israel and internationally after Hamas put coffins with the bodies of hostages it had killed in captivity on display, putting on a celebratory event to mark the handover of the remains to the Red Cross.
The coffins held the bodies of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, who had been 10 months old and four years old respectively when they were kidnapped and murdered. Another coffin held the body of peace activist Oded Lifshitz, who was 83 when he was kidnapped and killed.
A fourth coffin was supposed to contain the body of mother Shiri Bibas, but it was later identified as a Gazan woman, with Bibas’s body apparently only being returned overnight between Friday and Saturday.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 63 hostages, including 62 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 36 confirmed dead by the IDF.