Following the release of a disturbing Hamas propaganda video featuring 24-year-old Israeli hostage Evyatar David, who appeared severely emaciated and was shown digging what he identified as his own grave, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has issued a response.
“Hamas’s cruelty knows no bounds,” Netanyahu stated. “While Israel permits humanitarian aid into Gaza, Hamas terrorists are deliberately starving our hostages, cynically documenting their suffering.”
Netanyahu urged the world to condemn what he termed the “criminal Nazi abuse” perpetrated by Hamas.
The Prime Minister’s office reported that Netanyahu spoke extensively with the families of David and Rom Braslavski, another hostage recently seen in similar condition, expressing “profound shock” at the videos released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. He assured the families that efforts to secure the hostages’ release were ongoing and would continue relentlessly.
Netanyahu, also on behalf of his wife Sara, conveyed his heartbreak to the families upon viewing the “unbearable videos.”
The video, released by Hamas on Friday, depicted a shirtless David marking off dates on a calendar and digging a grave in a narrow tunnel.
David’s family, in a statement through the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters, expressed their anguish at seeing their son “deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza – a living skeleton, buried alive.”
They described the deliberate starvation of their son as a propaganda tactic as “one of the most horrifying acts the world has seen.”
spoke at a large rally in Tel Aviv demanding a ceasefire and hostage release agreement over the weekend.
Ilay, addressing the crowd at Hostages Square, stated that the hostages “are on the absolute brink of death” and “may have only days left to live.” He accused Hamas of using Evyatar in a “horrific and calculated campaign of cruelty,” turning him into “a live hunger experiment” by “starving him deliberately, systematically, using his agonizing suffering as a twisted tool for depraved propaganda.”
Ilay asserted that Hamas’s actions were not just a violation of international law, but “a brutal, barbaric assault on every shred of basic human decency,” and “an act so vile it scars the very soul of humanity.”
The U.S. and Israel suspended their participation in ceasefire and hostage-release talks with Hamas in Doha, Qatar, two weeks prior due to a deadlock.
U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and Special Envoy to the Middle East met with Netanyahu in Israel on Friday before spending several hours in Gaza assessing food distribution centers amidst growing concerns about hunger.
Witkoff stated that they spent over five hours inside Gaza to “level-setting the facts on the ground, assessing conditions,” and meeting with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation and other agencies.
He said the visit was to give “a clear understanding of the humanitarian situation and help craft a plan to deliver food and medical aid to the people of Gaza.”
Chapin Fay, a spokesperson for the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, said the visit reflected Trump’s understanding of the stakes and that “feeding civilians, not Hamas, must be the priority.”
‘ Yael Kuriel and