Former Gaza hostage Evyatar David revealed that the started a crowdfunding campaign to help pay for his recovery efforts, and claimed that the Israeli government was not providing enough financial assistance to the former Hamas captives.
“I hope the next government will do better. I don’t know who it’s going to be, but I trust they will do better,” he told CNN in an interview on Wednesday.
He told the American outlet that his recovery is “very complicated,” and noted that he was a normal person before his time in Hamas captivity.
“Now it’s very different. It still takes time to process all this,” he said, “I’m trying to understand how to do good rehab and help myself with this.”
David was 22 when he was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists from the Nova Music Festival during the October 7 massacre. He was held hostage by Hamas for over two years before his release on October 13, 2025.
In August 2025, his Hamas captors forced him to film a video of him digging his own grave inside a Gaza terror tunnel.
Evyatar David: 'We didn't eat for three months'
On the day the video was filmed, David said in a previous interview with Israeli media that his captors told him and Guy Gilboa-Dalal to strip in order to compare their deteriorating physiques against each other. In the end, David was chosen as the subject of the video because the terrorists thought he looked worse.
“It’s all staged, but it relies on the truth; we didn’t eat for three months,” he told CNN. “Everything I say and do there, they told me to do it. You can see my body, I could barely move, when I tried to dig the grave, just to hold the shovel was almost impossible, probably the hardest physical thing I ever did.”
He told Israeli media in an earlier interview that he told himself that “it was possible that if I really died, I would be lying in that pit.”
He added that after the told the terrorists that he almost collapsed, they ignored him. “I could hear them laughing, eating cakes and drinking tea, like there is nobody walking next to them that looks like a skeleton,” he said.
He went on to say that the starvation that he and Gilboa-Dalal faced in Gaza caused a great deal of anxiety and conflict between them.
“The starvation, beyond the lack of food and physical feeling that you’re always hungry, is the mental feeling that you have nothing to eat, and you don’t know if you will have food in one hour, tomorrow, two days, you have no idea what is going to happen and maybe you are going to die from starvation,” he told CNN.
In a previous interview with Israeli media, he described the fights he and Gilboa-Dalal got into over rationing the minimal food and water they were given.
“We cursed and really screamed,” he said. “It was pure rage, the kind where everything goes black.”
After David was forced to film the video, he and Gilboa-Dalal were separated.
Former hostage tells CNN he has PTSD, mental issues after Gaza captivity
He told CNN that during his captivity, he was held mostly underground. During that time, he said that thoughts of his family and friends were the only thing that kept him going.
“When you feel at your lowest is the perfect time not to give up, because that’s the point that can break you. Once you understand that and don’t let it break you, you can find yourself in a better place. It doesn’t matter what you have been through; don’t give up when you feel you are going to break because this is where the turning point can be,” he told CNN.
As he moves forward with recovery, David told CNN that he struggles with PTSD.
“It can surprise me any time; one hour I can be fine and happy, and next I can remember something from captivity and get flashbacks,” he told CNN.
“I wake up at night with nightmares, and it affects me all day after that. It’s very unstable and random.”
Notably, David said that one of his main coping tools after his release has been music.
“If I feel sad or upset, it’s one of the best things I can do if I want to run from my thoughts and feel calm and unstressed. I don’t know what I would do without music,” he told CNN.
He also told the American outlet that he will be traveling to the US next month for a series of speaking engagements.
“It’s very important for us to keep our stories alive and that people understand and remember what we’ve been through. The world needs to know what happened and can’t forget about it,” he said.
This past month, he attended his brother’s wedding and performed a song on the guitar there. He pointed to moments like this, as well as the wedding of former hostage Eliya Cohen, as proof that Hamas failed to break their spirits.
“They tried to ruin our [lives] and our families’ lives, and eventually they didn’t manage to ruin everything,” He told CNN. “It’s the biggest closure and a huge moment of victory.”