Eliya Cohen reunites with his family and partner after his release from Hamas captivity
(Video: IDF)
Cohen said he chose to speak publicly in hopes of advancing the release of remaining hostages. "I promised Alon [Ohel] that I’d make it out," he said. "And until I meet you back home, it’s not over."
He and Ziv were among the first to flee the Nova music festival site when the assault from Gaza began. "I looked at Ziv and said, 'I don’t want to stay here,'" he recalled.
When they reached a nearby shelter, it was still sparsely occupied. "That’s where I met Alon for the first time," he said. “We were getting alerts on our phones about terrorist infiltrations. We realized this was much more than rockets—but we believed the army would come.”
As the terrorists reached the shelter and began throwing grenades inside, another festivalgoer, Aner Shapira, turned to those hiding with him. "Out of nowhere, he said: 'We can’t let them kill us like this,'" Cohen recounted. “Another grenade was thrown in—he picked it up and threw it out. I saw it with my own eyes. Everyone understood exactly what he was doing.”
Alon Ohel was also abducted from that same shelter and was later held in Gaza’s tunnel network alongside Cohen, who emphasized that his interview was meant to push for Ohel’s release.
That morning, Ohel managed to call the police from the shelter. Cohen remembered him saying: "We’re in a shelter, they’re throwing grenades and shooting at us." The police response, he said, was shockingly dismissive: “Hide. Bye.”
Cohen also recalled the moment Shapira was hit. "At one point, Aner was holding a grenade. I saw them shoot him. He fell to the ground, and the grenade exploded with him. I said to myself, 'I can’t believe this.' The guy protecting us was gone."
Despite the chaos, others continued to throw grenades out of the shelter. "I remember a woman picking up a grenade and tossing it," he said. “Then came the last grenade—the one that severed Hersh Goldberg-Polin’s hand. After that, no one else got up to throw grenades.”
Cohen described the desperate decision to hide beneath bodies to survive. "I saw a body, grabbed it and used It as cover. I told myself: ‘At least if more grenades go off, this will protect me and Ziv.’”
Lying under the dead, he clung to a line Ziv had whispered—words that, he said, sustained him throughout captivity: “Well, at least we’ll be together up there. No one can disturb us there.”
Cohen also shared the lingering physical effects of that morning. "Ever since I left the shelter, I’ve had ringing in my ears," he said. "Even then, I realized my hearing wasn’t okay."
Cohen says he will never forget the moment of his abduction. “I saw three terrorists with phones filming us, with insane, crazed smiles on their faces. I won’t forget that smile—it’s the smile of my kidnapping. I go to sleep with it, I live it,” he recalled.
One of the terrorists pointed his gun at him and dragged him away, separating him from Ziv. “I saw pickup trucks and dozens of terrorists,” he said. As they drove toward Gaza, he heard the terrorists shouting with joy, “celebrating like they had won.” He described being beaten with rifle butts, stomped on and spat at.
During the ride, one of the hostages tried to escape by jumping from the vehicle. “He decided to take matters into his own hands and said, ‘I’m jumping.’ We told him not to, but he jumped mid-ride. They stopped the truck, shot him dead and continued driving to Gaza like nothing happened.”
Upon arriving in Gaza, Cohen was allowed to shower. “It was the first time I saw myself in a mirror—I was covered in blood, pieces of burnt skin on my face and body. I looked at myself and thought, ‘I can’t believe I have body parts on me.’” He said he resolved at that moment to survive: “I told myself, ‘There’s no way I’m not making it home. I’ll give them what they want, I’ll play along.’”
Soon after, someone who identified himself as a doctor examined Cohen’s gunshot wound and said he would remove the bullet—without anesthesia. He gave Cohen a piece of cloth to bite on and warned, “You can’t scream. If civilians outside hear you, they’ll come in—and I can’t protect you.”
Cohen described the moment they arrived in the tunnels: “That’s when we met the chains. They tied them tight. They cut into your legs. Even going to the bathroom took ten minutes. I told myself, ‘I’m actually chained up, like a monkey.’” The chains were almost never removed, only during the rare showers—once every two months.
The captors frequently changed food routines to inflict psychological torment. “You find yourself begging, and they enjoy it. They know they’re starving you.” Occasionally, Cohen said, they managed to appeal to a guard’s humanity when he was alone. “Sometimes it worked. There’s no way to describe the feeling when he walks in with a pita, a chocolate bar or peanut butter. In that moment, it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to you—because you’ve survived another day.”
He also spoke of the psychological abuse. “Once or twice a week they’d enter the room and say, ‘Everyone strip down—underwear too,’” Cohen recalled. The captors would inspect how thin the hostages were and decide whether to reduce their food portions. “You see the smile on their faces and know it’s all a sham, but you ask yourself, ‘How low can this go?’ There’s nothing more Nazi than that. I hate Holocaust comparisons, but this… this is as close as it gets.”
Responding to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s claim that “only military pressure brings hostages home,” Cohen shared a chilling perspective. “Every day they bombed Gaza, our captor would tighten our handcuffs. They’d say, ‘You abuse our prisoners, so I’ll abuse you.’ They’d tighten the chains, cut our food and escalate the humiliation and food games.” He added that the danger of returning to combat was made clear from day one: “They kept saying from the first moment to the last—if the army tries to rescue you, the first thing we’ll do is kill you.”
Cohen recalled the emotional moment he was informed of his upcoming release—and the anguish of leaving Alon Ohel behind. “Alon panicked. He was terrified and began to cry. I looked at him and said, ‘Brother, I’m getting out on March 1 and you on March 8—it’s all good.’ I truly believed the second phase would come quickly.”
He shared details of Ohel’s condition. “He’s blind in one eye and probably not doing well. We spent a lot of time talking—deep, emotional conversations. We hugged, we cried. I told him to stay strong. I promised him that even when I get out, I won’t forget him.”
Cohen also remembered a moment from just a week before his release. “We were sitting together. The following Monday was Alon’s birthday. He said, ‘My birthday’s next week—let me go.’ That level of innocence—he’s just magical. And the terrorist looked at him and didn’t know how to respond.”
Cohen issued a pointed message to Israeli decision-makers: “It’s simply not logical that I’m having to speak to the government—that we’re telling them about what we endured there: starvation, chains, violence—they hear all of it and still choose to resume fighting.”
He stressed the urgency of the situation: “There are human beings underground. A solution must be found. They need to sit at the negotiating table and figure out how to bring those people home. In my view, continuing down this path is a death sentence.”
