More than two months after his release, Elkana Bohbot said he is still living “from hour to hour,” describing the lingering impact of more than two years in captivity and the difficulty of returning to ordinary life.
“I live from hour to hour, I have no routine,” he said. “I manage to enjoy myself and see the good, but it’s still not complete. There’s always a feeling that something is missing.”
In an interview published Monday, Bohbot said reconnecting with his family has been painful and slow. “I take care of myself, but it has not been easy connecting with my son, Re’em, again, after he didn’t have a father figure for two years,” he said. “It’s a process and it will be a long one.” He added that his family continues to face serious challenges. “My mother is sick and this is another battle, we’re fighting here for many things. I want to bring Re’em a brother or sister, and for them to have a safe home here in Israel to sleep in,” he said. “That’s all we want.”
Bohbot, 34, was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, from the Nova music festival and held by Hamas until his release during the opening days of the October ceasefire. He said most of his captivity was spent chained inside underground tunnels, enduring starvation and repeated abuse.
“As hard as it was physically, it was even harder mentally,” he said. “The last six months were the hardest, since they starved us.”
He described the tunnels in stark terms. “[In the tunnels], there is no difference between you and a dead person; both of you are buried without air, with the worms,” he said. “The only difference is that your heart is beating. Besides that, you are a corpse.”
Among the most disturbing revelations, Bohbot said his captors staged a fake suicide attempt for propaganda purposes, filming him and another hostage in a fabricated scene that was never released. “They drew blood from our hands and beat us so that we would be injured, to simulate a suicide scene,” he said.
He also said his captors used psychological torment, feeding him false information about his family. “They told me that my mother died and that my wife had left me,” he said.
Bohbot recounted that during his first days in Gaza, he and other hostages discussed a desperate escape plan. “The plan was that we would overpower the terrorists while they were praying, draw a Magein Dovid on a white sheet, go up to the roof and try to signal the helicopter with a flashlight,” he said.
The attempt never materialized. “From this apartment, they took us down to a tunnel, and underground, there is no way out,” he said.
He described the routine violence and humiliation inflicted on him, particularly when he asked for food. “You’re barefoot, thrown away like a garbage bag, they beat you, they play with you. It’s sickening,” he said, adding that he was forced to watch Hamas propaganda videos showing Israeli soldiers being killed.
Bohbot also revisited the moment of his abduction at the Nova festival, describing the attack as a calculated slaughter. “People lay on the floor in panic, and then the chaos began,” he said.
“It was a hunting trip, a massacre,” he said. “Suddenly, 70 terrorists were all around us, passing by with weapons, breaking windows of vehicles, verifying their kills.”
“Human animals, shooting dead people,” he said.
After being seized, he said, the fear of what awaited him intensified. “They loaded us into a van, and from there to Gaza,” he said, adding that he was terrified of being attacked by civilians once inside the Strip.
“I talked to God, I said: Free me from this suffering, give me a bullet in the head, just don’t let them lynch me,” he said.
Now free, Bohbot said survival has given way to another kind of struggle: rebuilding a life forever marked by captivity, loss, and the hope of restoring what was taken from him and his family.
{Matzav.com}
