Images of Starving Israeli Hostage Held by Healthy Hamas Captors Stir Outrage in Israel and Beyond
‘So, who’s really being starved in Gaza?’ Israeli officials say.
Recent images of starving Israeli hostages still being held in Gaza being served food and drink by apparently healthy captors are generating outrage in Israel and beyond and calling into question Hamas claims about its treatment of those prisoners nearly two years after they were taken captive.
On Sunday, the terror group claimed that Israeli hostages would not receive “special privileges” in the food they are given compared to the rest of the population in Gaza.
“[Hamas] does not intentionally starve the captives, but they eat the same food our fighters and the general public eat,” Hamas’s military wing, the Al-Qassam Brigades, said in a statement. “They will not receive any special privileges amid the crime of starvation and siege.”
But a video of hostage Evyatar David released by Hamas officials over the weekend, in which an emaciated Mr. David is seen being given food by his captors, contradicts those claims.
“Palestinian terrorists slipped up and made a mistake in their propaganda video,” conservative commentator Marina Medvin said along with a post of the photo on X. “The plump arm of one of the terrorists is visible in the video, showing a sharp contrast with the emaciated arm of the starved hostage.”
Israeli officials recirculated the photo and called out Mr. David’s captors for lying about hostage conditions, saying, “Gaza terrorists eat well as they starve the Israeli hostages.”
“Look at the arms of Evyatar David — an Israeli hostage, starved to the edge of collapse. Now look at the arm of his Palestinian Hamas captor — strong, well-fed, offering a can for show,” read a post on the State of Israel’s X page. “So, who’s really being starved in Gaza?”
Mr. David has been held in Hamas captivity since being kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival on October 7, 2023, when the terrorist organization launched its deadly attack on Israel.
The image of him receiving a can of food was from a video in which he can be heard saying “I haven’t eaten for days… I barely got drinking water. He is also depicted in the video digging what he claims will be his own grave.
“We are forced to witness our beloved son and brother, Evyatar David, deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas’s tunnel in Gaza,” his family said in a statement released on Saturday. “A living skeleton, buried alive.”
The family of another hostage, Rom Braslavski, authorized the release of a second video late Sunday — distributed publicly by Hamas along with the video of Mr. David — depicting the young man in what appears to be spartan conditions also bordering on starvation.
“I have never seen my son like this,” his mother, Tami Braslavski, said in a statement accompanying the video. “Rom is not shouting or angry—he speaks quietly, in a weak voice like a person who has accepted the fact that there’s nothing left to fight for and may not come out of there alive. They say that when words run out, tears speak.”
