Eliya Cohen, a survivor of captivity in Gaza, shared the harrowing details of his experience during an interview on Channel 12 News on Tuesday night.
He spoke about the terrifying ordeal of October 7, when he and others escaping the Nova Music Festival sought refuge in a location later dubbed the “Death Shelter.”
“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.'”
Cohen described how Aner Shapira heroically attempted to defend them by returning grenades thrown into the shelter.
“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 continued, explaining that others tried to carry on Aner’s efforts.
“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.”
Cohen himself was eventually hit by gunfire. As he lay wounded, he whispered the words of the Shema and opened his eyes to a haunting sight.
“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 captives made a desperate attempt to flee by leaping from the vehicle.
“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.”
Once in Gaza, Cohen endured surgery without any form of anesthesia to remove the bullet lodged in his leg.
“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.'”
While held in the tunnels, he encountered other hostages and was subjected to severe psychological torment. The captors mistreated and degraded them, chaining their legs, stripping them, and keeping them constantly hungry.
“You find yourself begging—and they enjoy it. They know they’re starving you.”
Throughout his captivity, Cohen was convinced that Ziv had perished in the shelter.
“In my heart, I never imagined she had survived. At first, it was unbearable—the realization that I had lost my girlfriend. We’ve been living together since the day we met.”
After the tunnel in which he was held was bombed, he and another hostage, Alon Ohel, were relocated. As Cohen was being released, he offered words of comfort and strength to Alon.
“He can’t see out of one eye. He’s probably not in good shape. We had deep conversations. I told him, ‘Don’t forget where you came from and your family.’ We hugged and cried. I promised him that even when I got out, I wouldn’t forget him.”
The moment he discovered Ziv was still alive was one he will never forget.
“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.'”
Cohen was in shock.
“I said, ‘What do you mean, Ziv? You’re messing with me!’ She said, ‘No.’ We both started sobbing uncontrollably in the car. I told her, ‘You could send me back for another 500 days—just tell me again that Ziv is alive.'”
During the interview, Cohen made an emotional appeal to Israel’s leadership to act urgently to save those still in captivity.
“It’s simply unthinkable that I have to beg the government. We tell them what we went through—the starvation, the chains, the violence—they hear all of it, and yet they still choose to continue fighting. There are people underground. A solution must be found. They need to sit at the negotiating table and figure out how to bring them home. To me, this is a death sentence.”
{Matzav.com Israel}
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