Held hostage in a tunnel under Gaza for nearly 500 days, Or Levy – starved of sunlight, unable to stand up straight, not knowing whether his wife was dead or alive – would often watch, hungry, as his Hamas captors ate the food he was denied.
The captors ate “chicken, meat – they had everything,” while his brother and the others he was held alongside “were getting nothing,” Michael said. The Hamas fighters “even laughed when they saw them looking” at their meals, he added.
After emerging from the tunnels as part of a ceasefire deal earlier this month, Israelis were shocked by the skeletal state of Or Levy, Ohad Ben Ami and Eli Sharabi. Gaunt and haggard, the appearance of the recently released detainees, as well as their testimonies, have raised fears about the wellbeing of those remaining in Gaza, as the first phase of the ceasefire nears its end and the next remains uncertain.
Or, 33 on the day of his capture, was dancing with his wife, Einav, at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when Hamas-led gunmen poured over the border into southern Israel. Einav was killed in the rampage – something Or had long suspected, but did not know for sure until his release 16 months later.
Over that time, Israel has laid waste to Gaza, in an offensive it said was aimed to free the remaining hostages and render Hamas incapable of governing the enclave or posing a military threat. Israel has been criticized by rights groups of stemming the flow of humanitarian aid to Gaza, leaving Palestinian children to die of starvation. United Nations experts also warned of famine in the strip, before the ceasefire deal helped get some aid to the 2.1 million people living there.
Asked whether his brother may have been denied food because of shortages in Gaza, Michael said this did not explain why the Hamas captors ate well.
“They were intentionally starved. It’s as simple as that. The terrorists next to them ate all the time,” he said, relating what his brother had told him about his time in the tunnels. Hamas laughed when the unfed hostages looked at their full meals.
Michael said the water his brother was given was rarely clean enough to drink, the tunnel was not tall enough for him to stand up in, and there was no natural light. “Those are the most horrific conditions that you can imagine,” he said.
The spokesman said Or Levy’s was “a special case due to special security circumstances, and we must look at the rest of the cases that were in excellent health despite the circumstances.”
Also starved of news from the outside world, Or only learned of Einav’s death after he was released. “He did not know. He assumed, and asked, and we told him,” Levy’s mother, Geula, told Israeli media.
While the couple were at the Nova festival, Einav’s parents were caring for their son, Almog, who was two years old at the time. Michael said they wanted to reintroduce Almog to his father slowly – first a phone call, then a video one, before meeting face-to-face.
“We were worried that he might be scared, or he won’t recognize him or something like this – but it was like they were never apart,” Michael said.
Almog asked his dad what had taken him so long to come back. Or “just hugged him, he couldn’t really respond to it. I mean, how can you respond to it?”
Two different fates
Or Levy’s ordeal was entwined with that of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an Israeli-American who became one of the most recognizable hostages held by Hamas. The two men hid with nearly 30 others in a bomb shelter on October 7, before Hamas gunmen began to lob grenades inside.
Goldberg-Polin, then 23, threw out the grenades one by one, before one detonated in his hand, blowing his arm off from the elbow down. Along with Levy and others, he was marched into a pickup truck and driven to Gaza.
Despite a high-profile campaign by his parents to free the hostages, Goldberg-Polin was murdered in August by his captors in Gaza, according to the Israreli military, which found his body shortly after he had been shot dead.
Michael Levy said his brother had a “meaningful” conversation with Rachel and Jon Goldberg-Polin, Hersh’s parents. “He wanted to tell them a few things that they probably didn’t know about their son,” he said, without going into detail.
The Goldberg-Polins launched a fresh appeal to US President Donald Trump’s administration to hasten efforts to free the remaining hostages, saying they were spurred to do so after seeing the condition of Or Levy and the two others released with him.
‘Mental torture’
Each weekend of hostage releases has become a grim propaganda exercise, with the freed Israelis paraded on stage and some presented with certificates and Hamas-branded gift bags.
The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), which is responsible for receiving the hostages from Hamas and handing them over to the Israeli military, has said it is “increasingly concerned about the conditions surrounding release operations” and urged all parties to “ensure that future releases are dignified and private.”
The stage-managed releases have also been used to inflict further distress on some hostages themselves, as well as wider Israeli society. On Saturday, Hamas released a heavily edited propaganda video showing two unreleased hostages, Eviatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, watching the release of fellow Israelis from a vehicle – before being taken back into hiding.
David and Gilboa-Dalal, friends since they were infants, were also captured at the Nova festival.
“They look sick, terrified, pale, almost yellow. They were begging for us to save them,” said Ilay David, Eviatar’s brother, after watching the Hamas video.
Gal Gilboa-Dalal, Guy’s brother, said for Hamas to show the hostages daylight for potentially the first time in 15 months, “to make them see what freedom might look like for them, and then close the door and drag them back to hell – it’s awful.”
A recently freed female hostage said she was overwhelmed by the number of people who had gathered in Gaza to watch her release.
“I knew there would be plenty of people, but I didn’t expect that amount,” Agam Berger, an Israeli soldier, told Israel’s Kan Radio in her first interview since she was released.
Whilst in captivity, Berger said she was fed two meals a day, mostly made of rice, and that she would occasionally be allowed to watch the news, including Al Jazeera, and listen to Kan Radio, Israel’s public broadcaster.
“We also had food and conditions that, for the most part, were okay – considering what it could have been,” she said. “In that moment, you think, what is there not to be grateful for? But when you really think about it, these weren’t human conditions.”
Over the rounds of hostage releases, male captives have generally appeared more emaciated than the women, suggesting the men were worse fed.
Berger said that, on the day of her release, Hamas fighters “literally dressed me themselves to make sure I didn’t take anything at all,” making her leave behind sketchbooks she had filled with drawings, letters for her family and a prayer book.
She added that she was made to wear a hijab on the way to the handover venue, and that the militants forced her “to record videos in the car, saying ‘thank you’ and all that nonsense.”