Freed hostage Elkana Bohbot: Hamas made me film mock suicide video
In a harrowing interview, Bohbot also reveals details of early attempt to escape his Hamas captors and describes surviving terrorist ‘hunting trip’ at Nova festival massacre
The Times of Israel
Dec 29, 2025
Freed hostage Elkana Bohbot revealed new, harrowing details of his time in captivity in an interview published Monday, including that his Hamas captors filmed a propaganda video in which they made it appear as if he and another hostage were attempting to kill themselves.
“They drew blood from our hands and beat us so that we would be injured, to simulate a suicide scene,” Bohbot said in an interview with the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahronoth, without revealing the names of other hostage that Hamas filmed alongside him. The video he described was never released by the terror group.
Bohbot, 34, was kidnapped on October 7, 2023, from the Nova music festival, and spent just over two years in Hamas captivity before his release during the first days of the ceasefire in October. Since his release, he has recounted details of the torture and starvation that his captors inflicted on him, including that he was chained in a tunnel for most of his time in captivity.
“They told me that my mother died and that my wife had left me,” he added in the interview published Monday.
Bohbot also shared that he and other hostages attempted to escape their captors during his first week in Gaza: “The plan was that we would overpower the terrorists while they were praying, draw a Star of David on a white sheet, go up to the roof and try to signal the helicopter with a flashlight.”
However, the plan never came to pass, as the group was moved from the apartment where they were first held: “From this apartment, they took us down to a tunnel, and underground, there is no way out.”
Israeli hostage Elkana Bohbot speaks in a Hamas propaganda video issued on March 29, 2025.
“[In the tunnels], there is no difference between you and a dead person; both of you are buried without air, with the worms,” he said. “The only difference is that your heart is beating. Besides that, you are a corpse.”
“As hard as it was physically, it was even harder mentally,” he said. “The last six months were the hardest, since they starved us.”
“You’re barefoot, thrown away like a garbage bag, they beat you, they play with you. It’s sickening,” he said, describing how his captors would force him to watch Hamas propaganda footage of Israeli soldiers being killed in combat whenever he asked for food.
A ‘hunting trip’
He also recounted the exact moment when he was kidnapped during the Nova festival massacre, which he described as a “hunting trip” for the Hamas terrorists who rampaged at the event, where they killed some 360 civilians and kidnapped dozens of others.
“People lay on the floor in panic, and then the chaos began,” he said.
It was a “a hunting trip, a massacre,” he said. “Suddenly, 70 terrorists were all around us, passing by with weapons, breaking windows of vehicles, verifying their kills.”
“Human animals, shooting dead people,” he described.
“I talked to God, I said: Free me from this suffering, give me a bullet in the head, just don’t let them lynch me,” he said.
“I live from hour to hour, I have no routine,” he said of his life in the two months since his release.
“I manage to enjoy myself and see the good, but it’s still not complete. There’s always a feeling that something is missing,” he said.
“I take care of myself, but it has not been easy connecting with my son, Re’em, again, after he didn’t have a father figure for two years,” he added. “It’s a process and it will be a long one.”
“My mother is sick and this is another battle, we’re fighting here for many things. I want to bring Re’em a brother or sister, and for them to have a safe home here in Israel to sleep in,” he said. “That’s all we want.”
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