“What I’m doing now is digging my own grave,” says Evyatar David, as his fragile figure, weak with hunger, scrapes at the dirt with a shovel in a cramped Gaza tunnel.
“Every day, my body becomes weaker and weaker,” the 24-year-old hostage adds, “and time is running out.”
This is just one of the horrifying scenes recorded in the latest hostage videos released by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad at the weekend showing two of the surviving Israeli hostages, kidnapped on October 7, 2023, sharply deteriorating in captivity.
Broadcast of the disturbing images across Israeli and international media was approved by the traumatized hostage families, who told CNN they wanted the plight of their loved ones to be witnessed.
“Evyatar was a young, healthy man before he was abducted, even a bit chubby. Now he looks like a skeleton, a human skeleton, buried alive,” the captive’s brother, Ilay David, told CNN in Tel Aviv.
The state of Rom Braslavski, still just 22, seems even more dire. In a video released by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad group holding him, his emaciated body is shown writhing in pain on the floor of a makeshift Gaza prison as he tearfully pleads for relief.
“My foot doesn’t look good and I can’t walk to the bathroom. I’ve run out of food and water. I can’t sleep, I can’t live,” he sobs.
His own mother says her son’s weak voice sounds like he’s accepted he may never come out alive.
The videos come amid a worsening hunger crisis in Gaza, with a UN-backed food security agency warning that the “worst-case scenario of famine” is unfolding in the territory. Health officials in Gaza say a further 13 people died from malnutrition over the weekend, including one child, bringing the total death toll from starvation since the conflict began in 2023 to at least 175.
It all piles further pressure on the Israeli government, already facing growing international isolation over the catastrophic humanitarian situation in Gaza, and now facing renewed calls for it to get the remaining 50 hostages back home from Gaza as soon as possible.
How best to do that is one of the key questions dividing Israeli opinion.
“The horror videos by Hamas stem from one goal – their attempt to pressure the State of Israel,” said Itmar Ben Gvir, the right-wing firebrand, in remarks made during a controversial visit at the weekend to the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in East Jerusalem, known to Jews as Temple Mount.
“It is from here that a message must be sent: to conquer the entire Gaza Strip, declare sovereignty over all of Gaza, eliminate every Hamas member, and encourage voluntary emigration. Only in this way will we bring back the hostages and win the war,” Ben Gvir added.
His calls to double down on Israel’s already devastating military action in Gaza, and to essentially evict the local Palestinian population, might be dismissed as the ravings of a fringe radical.
But Ben Gvir is a senior minister in the Israeli government and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu depends on him and other Jewish nationalist hardliners, who are against any kind of deal with Hamas, to keep his fragile governing coalition in power.
Furthermore, Israeli media reports suggest Netanyahu may indeed be leaning towards stepping up military operations in Gaza.
In the past, many Israelis, including many hostage families, have accused Netanyahu of deliberately prolonging the Gaza conflict in order to preserve his governing coalition, accusing him of essentially sacrificing their loved ones to cling on to power.
But the latest hostage videos, showing emaciated captives in a, frankly, appalling state have provoked shock and outrage across Israel.
With hostage families convinced time is running out for their loved ones to be rescued or returned, enormous pressure has been placed on the Israeli government to strike a deal with Hamas before it is too late.
