60 Minutes did an exclusive with three Israeli hostages, who were recently released from Hamas captivity.
By Rachel Avraham
60 Minutes did an exclusive with three Israeli hostages, who were recently released from Hamas captivity. In their testimony to 60 Minutes, the three Israeli hostages reveal riveting new details about their time in Hamas captivity. Yarden Bibas, whose wife Shiri and two children, Ariel, age 4, and Kfir, 9 months old, were murdered in cold blood by Hamas, told 60 Minutes in an exclusive interview that Hamas informed him of the deaths of his wife and children, and said it was of no consequence.
“They were murdered in cold blood – [by] bare hands,” he told 60 Minutes. “They [Hamas] used to tell me: ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ll get a new wife, new kids – better wife, better kids,” he said, adding that his captors repeated that statement many times.
Bibas discussed with 60 Minutes his best friend who is still held in Hamas captivity and pointed to his shirt: “This is David. I’ve known him since first grade, and this is his younger brother, Ariel.” A hostage released in the first phase of the deal confirmed to the Cunio family that David was still alive and in Gaza, Ynet reported last February.
“We did everything together. He was with me in every big thing in my life,” Bibas said. “He was at my wedding. Now, probably the hardest thing that I have to [do is] move [on] with my life – and David is not with me.” He emphasized to 60 Minutes that he was worried for the Cunio brothers’ safety and that he was desperate to get them home to their families. “I lost my wife and kids. Sharon [Cunio] must not lose her husband,” Bibas stressed.
Bibas told 60 Minutes that he was mostly held underground in the tunnels and that IDF airstrikes terrified him: “It’s scary. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen, and when it happens, you are afraid for your life. The whole earth would move, like an earthquake, but underground. So everything could collapse at any moment.”
60 Minutes also interviewed former hostage Keith Seigal, who proclaimed: “I witnessed a young woman being tortured by the terrorists. I mean literal torture, not just in the figurative sense,” he said, adding that Hamas terrorists made him watch the torture in horror. “I saw [the] sexual assault [of] female hostages.”
Seigal related that after the first cease-fire ended in November 2023, the Hamas terrorists treated the remaining hostages worse: ““The terrorists became very mean and very cruel and very violent, much more so [than before the 2023 ceasefire]. They were beating me and starving me.”
He also corroborated what many released hostages have said about hygiene conditions in Gaza, saying that he was only allowed to take a bucket bath once a month, the Jerusalem Post reported. He then spoke about how Hamas had shaved male captives’ heads and genital areas: “I think… it amused them, or, you know, humiliated [us]. I felt humiliated.”
Tal Shoham, another former hostage, spoke of his time in captivity with Evyatar David and Gilboa-Dalal in front of 60 Minutes. He stressed that it took Evyatar David and Gilboa Dalal time to adjust to their new bleak reality: “One moment, he’s like, partying in the Nova, and in the next, he’s in the worst place in the world. It took him five or six days just to stop crying.”
He spoke to 60 Minutes about the fact that they three of them were beaten daily, held in cramped tunnels and barely given enough food to eat. In fact, the food situation was so bad that Shoham offered to give the guards massages in exchange for more food: “The exchange was that he would get a massage every day, and he would bring us more food, and different food – a can of tuna, sardines.” The conditions were so dire that both Evyatar David and Gilboa Dalal voiced suicidal thoughts to Shoham.
“One of the toughest things I heard from them [David and Gilboa-Dalal] was them telling me more than once: ‘Why stay alive now?’” Shoham said. “I mean, why not just take their own life with their own hands and finish it and get released from it,” he continued. “They are not children, but from time to time, I felt like a father to them. I really fear that they are now alone,” Shoham added.
