Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David endured systematic starvation, psychological torture, and months buried alive in Hamas tunnels before Monday’s historic hostage release after two years in captivity.
Among the 20 remaining living Israeli hostages freed early Monday morning in the final phase of the historic ceasefire and hostage-release agreement brokered by President Donald Trump were two young men whose ordeal was recounted in a detailed interview with former hostage Tal Shoham, who spoke exclusively to Breitbart News last month.
Gilboa-Dalal and David, both 22 when they were taken on October 7, walked into Israeli sunlight Monday morning after 736 days in Hamas captivity — two full years of deliberate deprivation, starvation, and abuse. The details below reflect Shoham’s testimony; he was held with them for more than eight months in a tunnel he called a “tomb,” sealed 20-30 meters underground.
Seized from the Nova Festival, Beaten by a Lynch Mob
The two were violently seized from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, as Hamas terrorists carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, killing some 1,200 Israelis. Shoham — abducted separately from Kibbutz Be’eri — said his cellmates later described being zip-tied, hooded, and thrown into a truck. Once in Gaza, a mob of so-called “uninvolved civilians” was allowed to beat them while armed men laughed. “For two weeks, their hands remained cinched behind their backs and their heads covered, with almost no food,” Shoham recalled.
Starved and Humiliated
Roughly 30 days into his own captivity, Shoham said Hamas guards brought Gilboa-Dalal and David into the apartment where he was being held. “They came to us in terrible shape — starved, handcuffed, terrified,” he said. “For weeks, they’d been fed almost nothing. Their hands were bound behind their backs, their ankles tied, their heads covered with plastic bags. But somehow, they still had spirit.”
The Hamas guards immediately cut food rations for all three. “After they came, we started to receive really small amounts — a pita bread every 24 hours with two flat teaspoons of cheese, and that was all,” Shoham recalled. On Fridays — the Muslim holy day — food dropped further as the guards feasted. “The starvation was so intense that just to stand up, we needed to lean on the wall not to faint,” he said.
Shoham described a sadistic daily ritual they called “the humiliation process.” Each afternoon, a Hamas guard summoned them one by one, slapping or beating them before sitting down to eat beans and meat in front of them, loudly savoring every bite while mocking them that Israel had forgotten them and their families were dead. Even so, the three refused to turn on each other. “In such an extreme environment, people tend to fight each other,” Shoham said. “We were smart enough to find ways to share the little food we had, to keep peace, and to form a brotherhood.”
Driven and Then Marched into the Tunnels
On June 24, 2024, Hamas told them they were being moved to a “better place.” Instead, the men were shaved, disguised as militants, and loaded into a Red Crescent ambulance packed with armed terrorists — a blatant abuse of humanitarian cover Shoham called a war crime. “They put a surgical mask over our eyes so we couldn’t see,” he said. “After 20 minutes, the air changed; we were rushed downhill, and I understood we were entering a tunnel — my worst fear — to be buried alive.”
After the short drive, they were forced to march for more than two hours through Hamas’s underground labyrinth. Evyatar David, whose glasses had been smashed on October 7, repeatedly stumbled on the uneven floor.
Entombed Underground
They were shoved into a concrete chamber barely three feet wide, six feet high, and forty feet long, with four thin mattresses on sand and a hole in the ground for a toilet. The iron door slammed shut behind them, sealing them inside with a fourth hostage, Omer Wenkert, who had already been alone there for six and a half months. “That was our tomb,” Shoham said. “I think that moment was the worst moment in my captivity, because then I understood we were going to stay inside those tunnels for eternity.”
The air was scarce, the humidity unbearable, and oxygen so thin that breathing itself took effort. “For the first three weeks, we were so deprived of oxygen that we could barely breathe straight,” he recalled. “Even for Omer, it was hard — now he had to share his oxygen with three other men.”
They were given only half a liter of water per day. “Sometimes I decided to skip food just to avoid the thirst afterward,” Shoham said. “The thirst was worse than the hunger.” He described the conditions as “filthy beyond words,” noting that most days there wasn’t enough water even to wash their hands after using the toilet. The hostages were forced to choose between drinking what little they had or using it to clean themselves — and, as Shoham put it, “the thirst was worse than the hunger.”
Deliberately Starved to Look “Like After the Holocaust”
Hamas deliberately starved the men as part of a propaganda strategy. “They told us openly: we are starving you so you will come out looking like after the Holocaust — skeletal, emaciated — so Israelis will feel pressure,” Shoham said.
Food rations often dropped to less than 300 calories a day. “On our best days, it was maybe 1,000 calories — less than half of what a man needs,” he said. Meanwhile, guards hoarded food stolen from humanitarian aid meant for civilians. “The Hamas guards had lots of bread there. They stole humanitarian aid from their own people, but they didn’t let us eat from it because they wanted us to suffer,” he said. Shoham said both he and David developed scurvy, a disease caused by extreme vitamin C deficiency that has been nearly eradicated in the modern world.
Torture, Smoke, and Psychological Warfare
Every 24 hours, the guards came down to taunt them. “In a good case, they just threw the food and water and left,” Shoham said. “Most of the time they shouted, beat us — especially the young ones, Evyatar and Guy — trying to confuse us.” To destroy any sense of time, the guards told them, “There is no time here.” The lights were left on for days or suddenly cut for 15 hours, plunging the hostages into complete blackness. “You couldn’t see your own hand,” Shoham said.
At times, the abuse nearly killed them. “They set fire in front of the iron door and directed smoke into the tunnel,” he recalled. “We were minutes from suffocating to death.”
Forced to Watch as Others Were Released
In February 2025, less than a month into President Trump’s return to office, Hamas informed the four men that a hostage deal had been reached. The guards told them one of them would soon be freed — then forced them to reenact their reactions for propaganda videos, demanding they “show more emotion.” When Hamas returned a week later, cameras rolling again, they announced that two hostages — Shoham and Wenkert — would be released. The others, Gilboa-Dalal and David, were ordered to stay behind and watch.
“I gave a hug to Guy and Evyatar. I tried to cheer them up,” Shoham recalled. “I told them soon after us, they would be released also.” Shoham and Wenkert were freed on February 22, 2025, as part of the first phase of hostage exchanges negotiated after Trump’s return to office. Gilboa-Dalal and David would remain entombed in Hamas captivity for nearly eight more months.
Separated in Final Cruelty, Reunited in Freedom
According to Israeli reports, Hamas separated Gilboa-Dalal and David two months before their release — a final act of cruelty after surviving together for nearly two years. On Monday, they were reunited in an Israeli hospital, embracing for the first time since that separation.
Shoham, who personally thanked President Trump at the White House after his release, credited the president’s decisive approach with saving his life and ultimately freeing the last hostages. “I owe my life to President Trump,” he said. “He’s the only one who actually makes peace in the Middle East. He sincerely cares.”
The Beginning of the Age of Faith and Hope
On Monday, as the final 20 hostages — including Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David — returned home under President Trump’s brokered agreement, the president addressed the Knesset in Jerusalem, declaring the moment “the beginning of the age of faith and hope.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked him directly: “Thank you for all you have done for us.”
For Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David — violently taken hostage at 22, beaten by mobs, starved to scurvy, and held for nearly two years in the depths of Gaza’s tunnels (including more than eight and a half months entombed underground with Shoham and Wenkert) — the nightmare has ended.
Shoham, reflecting on the friends he left behind, told Breitbart News last month: “I really, really hoped it would soon end and the hostages would come home — all of them.”
On Monday, that hope became reality. Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David are home.
Joshua Klein is a reporter for Breitbart News. Email him at jklein@breitbart.com. Follow him on Twitter @JoshuaKlein.
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