UNITED NATIONS — Three years after the worst massacre in Israel’s history, Eliya Cohen — who survived 505 days in Hamas captivity — took the stage at the United Nations alongside his newlywed wife, Ziv Abud, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre, and tried to explain to some of the world’s top diplomats what he had endured. "They didn't let me change clothes or to get a shower, even to eat or to drink," he said. "They chained me with heavy iron chains by my leg," Cohen said during an emotional discussion moderated by Dr.
Phil McGraw at Israel’s U.N. commemoration Tuesday. He said lights were kept on to prevent the hostages from sleeping and that captors would enter repeatedly during the night screaming in an effort to frighten them. Cohen said they were not permitted to use a restroom and that at times survival felt almost impossible.
FREED HOSTAGE ROM BRASLAVSKI DETAILS ABUSE, STARVATION DURING 738 DAYS IN GAZA CAPTIVITY But he described repeatedly forcing his mind away from the violence and toward the possibility of returning home. "Don't think about the violence. Don't think about the torture.
Don't think about everything," Cohen recalled telling himself. "Just continue, stay strong. And maybe one day, you will come back home to your family." Cohen was among the 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023 attack, when about 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel in their homes and in the Nova Music festival.
It was the deadliest single day in Israel’s history. He personally lost 48 people he knew that day. His wife, Ziv, carried a different piece of the same story.
Abud and Cohen had arrived at the Nova festival shortly before dawn with her 19-year-old nephew Amit and his girlfriend Karin. When the attack began, they eventually took refuge in a roadside bomb shelter that Cohen said was designed for roughly eight people but became packed with 29. HAMAS USED SEXUAL VIOLENCE 'DELIBERATELY AND SYSTEMATICALLY' ON OCT 7, COMMISSION REPORT FINDS Abud told the audience that more than 40 terrorists later attacked the shelter with grenades and gunfire.
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