Liberated Jewish Hostage Forced to Excavate His Burial Site Returning to His Old Self', Dad Says
The dad of a liberated Jewish hostage who was forced to excavate his personal grave in a Gazan underground passage has reported that his son's condition is "getting better every day".
The father was speaking after his 24-year son Evyatar David and two other released captives - Guy Gilboa Dalal and Eitan Mor - were released from health facility to a celebratory reception at their homes on Sunday.
"Words cannot express how joyful it makes me to see him growing back to his former self," the father added.
During August, eight weeks before the hostage's liberation, Hamas had posted a video depicting him emaciated in a confined concrete underground passage - a decision that provoked disapproval from Israel and several Western officials.
The father stated he was delighted to see his son's "vitality improving every day, his colour returning [to his face], his cheeks turning fuller".
"Fortunately, he pulled through it and he's strong."
The parent said he had experienced pain for months knowing that his son was only "80km away... and I couldn't assist him".
"It devastated me," he stated, including that he "was unable to sleep, consuming food, drink properly."
In August, his sibling the brother had characterized the Hamas footage as a "unprecedented kind of cruelty".
"He's a human skeleton. He was being malnourished to the extent where he could be deceased at any instant, and he suffers a significant amount," Ilay said at the time.
In the footage itself, Evyatar said: "I've gone without food for days... I scarcely received potable water." He was seen digging what he said would be his personal grave.
During Sunday, cheering crowds - featuring many friends and neighbours - welcomed Evyatar David as he arrived to his home city of the central Israeli city in Israel's central region.
Dr Michal Shteinman, chief at the medical facility where the three freed captives were treated, mentioned their physical conditions still showed the evidence of "this terrible captivity".
"We notice their blood tests... and we've also learned their accounts... they are not lying. You can see the indicators of this metabolic trauma. Their complexion narrates their experience. You can observe the blemishes and the lesions."
However Dr Shteinman stated further that the detainees "came back stronger than they were before".
Evyatar was taken from the Nova festival during the Hamas-led offensive on southern Israel on the seventh of October, 2023.
The former captive and 19 additional alive hostages have been liberated by Hamas under the initial stage of a United States-negotiated truce deal recently.
Hamas has also handed over fifteen out of 28 deceased hostages. Thirteen were Israelis, one was from Nepal and the remaining Thai.
In exchange, Israel has released two hundred fifty Arab prisoners and 1,718 prisoners from the Gaza Strip, and repatriated 15 remains of Palestinians for every Jewish hostage's corpse.
The IDF initiated a armed operation in the Gaza Strip in reaction to the 7 October 2023 offensive, in which militant group gunmen murdered about 1,200 individuals people in southern Israeli territory and took two hundred fifty-one more individuals detainee.
More than sixty-eight thousand people have been deceased by Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip afterwards, as reported by the militant group-controlled medical authority, whose figures are considered by the UN as trustworthy.
