Freed Jewish Captive Forced to Dig His Own Grave Is 'Growing Back to His Old Self', Father Reports
The parent of a freed Israeli hostage who was forced to excavate his personal grave in a Gaza tunnel has mentioned that his son's well-being is "getting better every day".
Avishai David was talking after his 24-year-old son the former hostage and another two liberated captives - another former captive and Eitan Mor - were discharged from hospital to a triumphant return at their residences on the weekend.
"I can't explain how joyful it makes me feel to see him growing back to his former self," the father continued.
During August, 60 days before the hostage's freedom, the militant group had posted a footage showing him severely underweight in a confined cement tunnel - a decision that provoked condemnation from Israel and many international officials.
The parent mentioned he was happy to see his son's "vitality enhancing every day, his colour returning [to his face], his facial features becoming fuller".
"Thank God, he endured and he's strong."
The parent said he had suffered for several months conscious that his son was only "80 kilometers away... and I couldn't assist him".
"It crushed me," he commented, adding that he "couldn't sleep, consuming food, hydrate adequately."
In August, Evyatar's brother the brother had described the Hamas footage as a "new form of cruelty".
"He's a human skeleton. He was being deprived of food to the extent where he could be dead at any instant, and he endures a tremendous amount," Ilay commented at the moment.
In the video itself, the hostage mentioned: "I haven't eaten for multiple days... I scarcely received drinking water." He was witnessed digging what he stated would be his own resting place.
During Sunday, joyful gatherings - including many friends and neighbors - greeted the former hostage as he came back to his hometown of Kfar Saba in central Israel.
The medical director, chief at the healthcare center where the three released hostages were attended to, stated their health status still showed the marks of "this horrific detention".
"We notice their laboratory results... and we've also listened to their experiences... they are not lying. You can observe the marks of this bodily damage. Their skin tells their experience. You can see the marks and the lesions."
However Dr Shteinman continued that the hostages "arrived tougher than they were previously".
The former hostage was taken from the Nova gathering during the Hamas-led assault on southern Israeli territory on the seventh of October, 2023.
He and 19 additional alive hostages have been liberated by Hamas under the first phase of a American-mediated halt in fighting agreement earlier this month.
The militant group has also released fifteen out of twenty-eight deceased hostages. 13 were Jewish people, one was Nepali and the remaining Thai.
In exchange, Israel has freed 250 Arab inmates and one thousand seven hundred eighteen individuals from Gaza, and returned fifteen bodies of Palestinians for every Israeli hostage's remains.
Military personnel began a defense campaign in the Gaza Strip in reaction to the 7 October 2023 assault, in which militant group fighters slaughtered about 1,200 individuals individuals in Israel's southern region and seized two hundred fifty-one more individuals hostage.
More than sixty-eight thousand persons have been fatally injured by Jewish state offensives in the Gaza Strip since then, as reported by the Hamas-run health ministry, whose numbers are seen by the United Nations as trustworthy.
