The father of a freed Israeli hostage who was forced to dig his own grave in a Gazan tunnel told the BBC his son was “getting better every day”.
Avishai David was speaking after his 24-year-old son Evyatar David and two other freed hostages – Guy Gilboa Dalal and Eitan Mor – were discharged from hospital to a hero’s welcome at their homes on Sunday.
“I can’t explain how happy I feel to see him grow back into his old self,” the father added.
In August, two months before the release of Evyatar, Hamas posted a video showing him emaciated in a narrow concrete tunnel – a move that drew condemnation from Israel and many Western leaders.
Avisai told the BBC’s David that he was happy to see his son’s “strong recovery every day, his color returning (to his face), his cheeks).
“Thank God, he pulled it off and he’s strong.”
The father said he suffered for months knowing his son was “80km away … and I couldn’t help him”.
“It took me over,” he said, adding that he “couldn’t sleep, eat, drink properly.”
In August, Evyatar’s brother told the BBC that the Hamas video was a “new form of brutality”.
“He was a human skeleton. He was starving until he died at any moment, and he suffered a lot,” Ilay said at the time.
In the footage itself, Evyatar said: “I didn’t eat for days… I barely drank water.” He was seen digging what he said was his own grave.
On Sunday, cheering crowds – including many friends and neighbors – greeted Evyatar David as he returned to his hometown of Kfar Saba in Central Israel.
Dr Michal Shteinman, Director of the Rabin Medical Center where the three hostages were treated, told the BBC that they bear the marks of “this terrible captivity”.
“We can see their blood tests … and we also hear their stories … we are not lying down. You can see the marks of this metabolic. You can see the cuts and wounds.”
But Dr Shteinman added that the hostages “came back stronger than they were”.
Evyatar was removed from the Nova Music Festival during the Hamas attack in southern Israel on 7 October 2023.
He and other hostages were freed by Hamas under the first phase of a failed ceasefire deal with the US last month.
Hamas also transferred 15 of the 28 dead hostages. Israel has thirteen Israelis, one is Nepalese and the other is Thai.
In return, Israel released 250 Palestinian prisoners and 1,718 detainees from Gaza, and returned 15 Palestinian bodies for each hostage to Israel.
The IDF launched a military campaign in Gaza in response to the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas that killed 1,200 people in southern Israel and took 251 others hostage.
More than 68,000 people have been killed in Israel’s attack on Gaza since then, according to the Hamas-run Health Mismal Ministry, whose figures are seen by the UN as reliable.