Former Hamas hostage Eliya Cohen spoke with Channel 13 News and shared new chilling testimony about his time in captivity, which was republished in Arutz Sheva, the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post.
By Rachel Avraham
Former Hamas hostage Eliya Cohen spoke with Channel 13 News and shared new chilling testimony about his time in captivity, which was republished in Arutz Sheva, the Times of Israel and the Jerusalem Post. He recalled his experience within the Bunker of Death at the Nova Music Festival on October 7th.
“We heard pickup trucks stopping—many pickup trucks—and shouting in Arabic. They threw the first grenade. Someone screamed, ‘Grenade!’ I jumped on Ziv, shielding her with my body. The first words that came out of my mouth were, ‘Ziv, I love you.’ The grenade exploded, killing everyone at the entrance. Ziv responded, ‘Eliya, I love you too.'”
He then witnessed Aner Shapira rising up and throwing grenades back at the terrorists. “Another grenade was thrown. He caught it and threw it back. I saw it with my own eyes. Everyone understood what he was doing. At some point, Aner was holding a grenade when they managed to shoot him. He fell to the ground, and the grenade exploded with him. That was the moment I said to myself, ‘I can’t believe this.’ The guy who was protecting us was gone.”
He also recounted that after Aner, others continued throwing grenades back. “I remember a young woman picking up a grenade and throwing it out—and then there was the last grenade, which ended up severing the hand of Hersh [Goldberg-Polin]. After that, no one got up to throw grenades anymore.”
At a certain point, Cohen was shot in the leg. According to Arutz Sheva, he recited the Shema Yisrael prayer, opened his eyes, and saw three terrorists. “They were holding phones with flashlights, filming us, grinning madly. I will never forget those smiles. I go to sleep with that smile haunting me. I live with it. That was the smile of my kidnapping.”
On the way to Gaza, one of the hostages attempted to escape by jumping from the moving vehicle, Arutz Sheva reported. “He decided to take matters into his own hands and said, ‘I’m jumping.’ We told him not to, but he did it anyway. The terrorists stopped the truck and shot him dead. We kept driving as if nothing had happened—as if a guy hadn’t just jumped and been executed.”
In Gaza, Cohen underwent surgery without anesthesia to remove the bullet from his leg, Arutz Sheva reported. “No painkillers. Just a rag stuffed in my mouth. They told me, ‘You can’t scream. If the civilians outside hear you, they’ll storm in, and I won’t be able to protect you.'”
In the tunnels, he met other hostages and was subjected to Hamas’ psychological warfare, Arutz Sheva reported. According to the report, the terrorists abused them, sometimes stripped them, chained their legs, humiliated them, and, most of all, starved them. “You find yourself begging—and they enjoy it. They know they’re starving you.”
Eliya told the Jerusalem Post: “In the end, you can deal with everything. You can deal with being humiliated. You can deal with being cursed at. You can deal with chains on your legs. Hunger is a daily struggle because, beyond being hungry, you’re also fighting for your life. Every night you go to sleep with: ‘What am I doing tomorrow to get that piece of pita?'”
According to the Jerusalem Post, Eliya compared their treatment to the Nazis: “”They would come into our room once or twice a week and say ‘Yalla, everyone take off your clothes, and underwear.'” The terrorists would then check if the hostages were “thin enough” and whether to cut their food. “They pretend to have a discussion about it,” he said.
“You look at them and see the smile on their faces. You understand it’s bullshit, but you say, to what levels can one sink. There’s nothing more Nazi than that. I hate comparisons to the Holocaust, but this is as close as it gets.”
During his time in captivity, Eliya believed that his girlfriend Ziv had perished on October 7th and he did not learn the truth till he arrived to Israel. “As soon as we got off the ambulance, someone came up to me and said, ‘Welcome back to Israel.’ I looked at her and thought, ‘She’s about to tell me the news.’ Then she said, ‘Your parents are waiting for you at Kibbutz Re’im.’ And then she added, ‘And Ziv.'”
