Former hostage Or Levy recounts starving in Hamas captivity

An Israeli former hostage has painted a haunting picture of the hell he endured from Hamas on the heels of the terrorists’ latest propaganda video showing an emaciated captive digging his own grave.  

Or Levy, 33, who was abducted Oct. 7, 2023, and held captive in Gaza for 491 days, spoke at a Long Island synagogue Sunday, sharing his own experience with “starvation” inside Hamas’ tunnels.  

“You can’t really understand what it is to starve — day after day after day,” Levy, told the Young Israel of Woodmere synagogue.

Levy, whose wife Einav was killed in the same shelter from which he was kidnapped and “dragged like a sack of potatoes,” was among the hostages freed in February — their emaciated bodies paraded around by Hamas before their release. 

Israeli officials noted that Levy and the other hostages freed earlier this year suffered from malnutrition, with some losing around 40% of their body weight in captivity.

Levy, the father of a 3-year-old boy, recalled the “inhumane” conditions he lived in, sleeping in a tunnel that had air “thick with mold” and lying on the hard floor without a mattress.

He and his fellow hostages survived on a single pita a day and shared two cans of food for four people — or “half a can a day” for each man.

They eked out two meals a day from the meager sustenance because “the psychological effect of eating once a day is crazy,” Levy said to the packed and stunned crowd who themselves were fasting to commemorate Tisha B’Av.

“I won’t describe to you what it is to be that hungry,” he said.

“A – you don’t deserve it – nobody deserves it. And, B, you can’t really understand what it is to starve day after day after day for months.”

Levy’s healthy appearance Sunday was in stark contrast to his gaunt silhouette upon his release from Gaza on Feb. 8, having shed 44 pounds during his brutal 15 months of captivity, according to the Times of Israel. 

Levy said his nightmares about previously being starving were reignited upon seeing the shocking images of hostages Evyatar David and Rom Braslavski, whose skeletal frames were shown off in the Hamas propaganda video last week.

David was seen inside a dark tunnel with a shovel in hand as he was forced to dig his own grave, with Braslavski filmed as he cried for food and water. 

As with Levy, both David and Brasklavski were kidnapped during the Nova music festival massacre and appear to be going through the same brutal torture as he did.  

“I know what they are going through, and I can promise you it’s the worst,” Levy said.  “These videos haunt me.”

Noting that the men have 170 days in captivity on top of what he endured, Levy said, “You know what I looked like,” referencing the shocking video of his emaciated frame marching through Gaza City upon his release, footage that prompted outrage from President Trump.

“They literally look like the old pictures of Holocaust survivors, the same thing,” the president said of the freed hostages at the time.

Before ending his emotional talk that left the rapt crowd in tears, Levy implored, “We must do everything we can to end this.”

The images of David and Braslavski triggered mass protests in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, with tens of thousands of Israelis taking to the streets to demand an end to the war in Gaza and immediate release of all of the hostages. 

The captives, only 20 of whom are believed to still be alive, have endured 668 days in captivity, with no sign of progress toward a cease-fire deal between Hamas and Israel. 

Trump’s envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, claimed Sunday that the US and Israel are close to a “very, very good plan” to end the war in Gaza and free the remaining hostages. 

But Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu maintains that a military operation is the best way to free the hostages, vowing to keep the war going until Hamas is eliminated.