In the previous round of the war with Iran in June 2025, Elkana Bohbot was in a tunnel.
His captors had repeatedly told him during the 12-day war that his wife Rivka and son Re’em David had been killed in an Iranian missile strike, but he said he “knew deep down” they were alive.
Last Saturday, amidst missile and drone strikes from Iran and Hezbollah, Bohbot was instead at home, embracing his wife and son. “The ability to wrap them in my arms and calm them during the sirens is insane to me,” he said.
“One of the hardest things I went through in the previous round was not being able to be there for them, the first time they were experiencing something like this. Now I have the privilege of being beside them, holding them tight, coping together with the sound of the planes, the interceptions, and the sirens.
Maybe people will think I’m crazy, but if there’s already a war, then at least let me have the ability to be with my family.”
When asked how he felt about Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei being eliminated, Bohbot answered, “There is no one happier than me. Full credit to those doing the work.”
Bohbot was released on October 13, 2025, after spending more than two years in tunnels under Gaza. As part of his recovery, he published a book titled 738 Days in Hamas Captivity, where he recounts his story of survival.
‘If there are people with no hope, let them read the book’
“The book is part of my healing,” he said. “It’s important to me that people read and understand what I went through, and also that they get to know me. I hope everyone who reads it takes something from it for life. If I came out of that hell alive, then anything can happen in this world.
If there are people with no hope or faith, let them read the book, and it will give them a different perspective on life, then I’ve achieved something.”
In his book, Bohbot writes, “Every day I saw the light, the hope, and prayed to the God of light,” he continued. “They, the terrorists, prayed every day and thought only about death, about abuse. Every day we fought a psychological battle, they with all their warfare equipment, and I with only my thoughts, to survive, to return to my son Re’em, three years old when I was torn away from him and he waited for me, and to my wife Rivka, who a few years earlier had still been a happy girl in Colombia and decided to cling to the Jewish people, converted, and built a family with me.
“738 days of survival, at times hopeless, in extreme hunger, and I still found ways to stay alive. With the rag doll Merlin that I created, which became a symbol of the silent hostage who would defeat the devil.”
When asked how he felt about being able to tell his story, Bohbot responded that the moment he came out of captivity, he knew that he had to get his thoughts and feelings out of his heart so that he wouldn’t forget what he went through and so that it wouldn’t trigger him in the future.
“Just a week after I was released from captivity,” he recalled, “I met with editor and ghostwriter Eli Halifa, and together we wrote the book over a week and a half. Every day we sat for about six hours, and I told him everything.”
Maariv asked Bohbot what it was like to open up while the wound was still fresh, and he responded that it felt like a release.
“I released something that had been sitting on my heart. A lot of people ask me what I went through in captivity, how I was kidnapped, how my captors abused me, what kept me going there, and all kinds of questions like that. Now everything is written in the book,” he said.
“I believe they do not understand,” answered Bohbot when asked if he felt that the world understands what he went through in captivity. “That’s why it’s important to me to tell what I went through at every opportunity, because something like this must never happen again anywhere in the world.”
“The world has to know what we went through,” he explained, saying that he never imagined that he would be kidnapped. “Who would have believed it?” he asked.
Bohbot recounted his enlistment to the IDF in November 2007, where he served in Orev Golani.
During Operation Cast Lead in 2008, the military entered the Gaza Strip through the Nahal Oz gate. “Who would have believed that 15 years later I would enter through that same gate, this time as a hostage and not as a soldier?” asked Bohbot.
The former hostage was at the Nova festival on the morning of October 7, 2023. Born and raised in Mevaseret Zion, a town west of Jerusalem, Bohbot was an entrepreneur involved in productions and Jerusalem nightlife.
He was working on the grounds of the Nova festival as an organizer, responsible for the logistics of the event.
“We started working on this party about seven months before the event,” he recalled. “Putting on a production of that scale requires major preparation, working with suppliers, locking in dates, paying advances to workers, and, of course, handling the sound, security, fencing, and cooperation with the regional council and the police.
“It’s very hard work and a lot of headaches, but the kind of headache you do with love. The goal was to make people happy, promote a culture of going out, and make sure the partygoers got home safely.”
IDF had given approval for Nova festival
When asked if he had previously considered the possibility of sirens due to the party’s proximity to the Gaza border, Bohbot responded that he was more concerned about the partygoers.
“The party was held in an open area, and I knew that the Iron Dome cannot intercept a barrage of rockets, and usually does not intercept impacts in open areas. We raised those questions with the IDF, and approval was given to hold the party.”
Commander of the Northern Brigade Col. Haim Cohen arrived at the Nova site on the morning of October 7, and despite warnings from Gaza Division Operations Officer Lt.-Col. Sahar Fogel changed nothing in the security arrangements.
Fogel had argued that the site posed a security risk due to its proximity to the border.
Bohbot recalled the moments the rockets started that morning.
“I went up on stage and, in a calm way so as not to pressure the partygoers, asked them to begin evacuating the area and get into their cars. While I was on stage, I saw helium balloons moving toward us.
Of course, the partygoers did not see what I saw, and so as not to panic them, I didn’t mention the balloons. Some people got into their cars and left, and some still didn’t understand what was happening, because at events like this, there are sometimes pauses and police announcements to stop the music.”
About 10 minutes after the shooting began, Hamas terrorists were already on the roads and intersections near the party, shooting at people attempting to leave by car.
“Some were murdered, and some made U-turns and came back to the party grounds,” Bohbot recalled. At that moment, he was still unaware of the situation that was unfolding.
Bohbot’s business partners, Michael and Osher Vaknin, got into a car with Avraham Neriya Cohen and Eliyahu Bernstein, members of the production team. Bohbot stayed behind to make sure that attendees were evacuating.
Michael later called Bohbot, who said he only then understood that it was a different situation than what he had expected. “A horror movie,” he described.
Michael, Osher, Avraham, and Eliyahu were all murdered by Hamas terrorists.
‘Impossible to describe what happened there’
Bohbot recalled the moment 70 terrorists entered the party and began slaughtering the partygoers as a “hunting expedition.”
“When the shooting started,” he said, “everyone lay down on the ground, and then the chaos began. They went around with their weapons, firing in every direction and making sure people were dead. It’s impossible to describe in words what happened there.”
Hamas terrorists kidnapped Bohbot at 8:45 a.m., along with Evyatar David, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Bar Kuperstein, and Almog Jan.
“We didn’t know each other before then,” explained Bohbot. “Now I tell myself that I was ‘lucky’ to be kidnapped, because the second option was that they would murder me.”
The kidnappers loaded them onto a pickup truck and began driving toward Gaza. “They beat the hell out of us in the truck,” Bohbot described. “I was injured. I knew that if I passed out, that was the end of me, so I held myself together and did not lose consciousness. When they entered Gaza, they did a victory lap, drove from place to place, fired into the air, and bragged that they had kidnapped us.”
“Because I was in the vehicle on top of the other hostages, every few minutes, a terrorist would lift my head, beat me badly, fire into the air, and press his hot weapon, right after the shot, against my leg. At every stop, they would shout ‘Jews,’ ‘Israelis.’ Dozens of children aged five and six would run toward us with sticks and beat us. The pickup truck would keep driving and after a few minutes stop again, and it was the same scene all over again. I had already started seeing stars.”
Bohbot described what was going through his mind in those moments. “I kept counting to ten so I could stay awake. In my heart, I prayed to the Creator and said: ‘Father in Heaven, please get me out of this alive, and if You are not getting me out of here, then honor me and put a bullet in my head because I am not willing to be murdered in a lynching by children.’
I didn’t want my son to grow up knowing his father had been murdered in a lynching. I was 98% sure my story was over, that I was turning in my equipment. I felt there was almost no chance I would come out of it alive.”
In one of the first videos taken from that dark Saturday, hostages are seen wounded in a dark room, their hands tied behind their backs and their faces toward the floor. Bohbot’s terrified expression, looking at the camera with his face bruised, appears in the video.
“In that room, the terrorists beat us brutally, spat on us, and cursed us,” he recalled.
On their first day in captivity, Bohbot, Gilboa-Dalal, David, and Kuperstein were together, but after three weeks, Bohbot and Kuperstein were separated.
“At first, we were in an apartment, and we had the idea of overpowering the terrorists while they were praying. To take a white sheet, draw a Star of David on it, and signal to an Israeli helicopter in the hope it would see us,” he says. “But very quickly they took us down into a tunnel, and from there it was already impossible to get out.”
In the tunnel, Bohbot and Kuperstein stayed with Segev Kalfon, Maxim Herkin, Yosef Haim Ohana, and Ohad Ben Ami. “We were barefoot all the time, thrown around like garbage bags, wounded. The only treatment, at best, was Acamol,” said Bohbot.
“Ohad and I were the only ones who went to bring the food, which meant half a pita with cheese for all of us. One of the ways they abused us was to give us the food and then force us to watch videos of terrorists sniping IDF soldiers or torturing soldiers in captivity. That was one of our hardest breaking points. The psychological abuse was no less terrible than the physical abuse.”
‘At the mercy of their moods’
Bohbot described the terrorists as “unpredictable.” One moment they could give you coffee, and afterward they would spit on you or take the coffee away, he explained.
“You are at the mercy of their moods. If one of the terrorists gives you coffee and you see he’s in a good mood, you feel safe enough to try to squeeze some crumb of food out of him. On the other hand. Another day, he can come to you and say, ‘If you come near me, you all die.’”
The terrorists would constantly tell Bohbot that they murdered his wife, child, and parents, he explained.
Maariv asked the former captive what kept him going in those difficult times.
“My thoughts of my wife and son, my parents, my mother’s food, and my wife’s food. I knew I was a father and that my son needed a father in the picture, no matter what.”
Bohbot passed the time with fellow hostages trying to mark the holidays together, he said, recalling the moment he drew a fish on a piece of paper for Rosh Hashanah.
He describes the moments the captives sang holiday songs together in his book: “We sat deep underground on the floor, above us a concrete ceiling, sand all around us. We sang ‘Eshet Chayil,’ ‘Shalom Aleichem,’ ‘Bar Yochai.’
I sing ‘Eshet Chayil,’ and in my mind I see Rivka, her head wrapped in a scarf and light shining from her face, and I sing to her with all my heart, convinced she hears or feels the songs coming out of the belly of the earth and reaching her.”
“There wasn’t always hope,” responded Bohbot when asked about his hardest moments. “There were cases when the terrorists said the IDF was above the tunnel, and that if our soldiers came a few meters closer, they would slaughter all of us. That was terrifying.”
Bohbot also described moments of crisis when he and his fellow captives heard that other hostages were being released and returning home.
“The terrorists knew how to play with our minds on that too, and said the government and the army did not care about us,” he explained.
When asked if he was aware of his wife and parents’ struggle to get him out of captivity, Bohbot responded that he had no doubt that his family was fighting for him. It was only in July 2024, however, that he discovered the extent of it.
“I saw my mother on television for three seconds,” he recalled. “I also knew about my relative Menashe Harush, who stood regularly in Hostages Square with my photo. The terrorists followed the demonstrations and the news broadcasts, and it seems that what happens in Israel interests them more than what happens in Gaza. They are obsessive about everything connected to Israel.”
Some Hamas terrorists even spoke Hebrew very well, he explained.
Bohbot recounted that he found out about his friends’ deaths during captivity. “After last Passover, I heard his [Uriel’s] father being interviewed on the radio. It was hard to hear that. I was full of guilt over why they were murdered, and I was alive,” he described.
Later in captivity, Bohbot created Merlin, a doll he calls “a dear brother,” which accompanied him until the day of his release.
“It was after Re’em’s last birthday,” he explained. “It had already become very, very hard for me in captivity, and I had to find something to occupy myself with. I remembered the movie Cast Away with Tom Hanks, when he is stuck on a deserted island and turns the volleyball he finds into a friend named Wilson.
I thought of sewing a doll like the kind of dolls I love buying for Re’em, so that it would be my best friend. I told the terrorists that gnats were getting into my ears and asked them for cotton. From that cotton and the threads from my pants, I sewed Merlin.”
Bohbot clarified that up until then, the hostages were still wearing the same clothes they had been kidnapped in. “The terrorists had no clothes to give us, and it was a nightmare, hard and stinking,” he said.
Maariv asked Bohbot about medical treatment in the tunnels.
“There was almost no treatment. We had corona, bacteria, and illnesses. In the first two weeks in the tunnel, I developed an allergy, and my temperature rose to 40 degrees Celsius,” explained Bohbot.
“If the terrorist had not injected me with steroids, I would have died. As for food, you are always hungry. There were times they gave us one small triangle of cheese for the whole day.”
‘My cry was real’
Hamas terrorists filmed five videos of Bohbot crying out and begging for his life. Four of them were published.
“The terrorists dictated what I should say, but my cry was real,” he explained.
“You can see it in my eyes. It cannot be faked. We prayed they would do everything to get us out of that hell. My life was in their hands. Let’s not pretend or be heroes. Whatever they told us to do, we did. If they had told me to say I was a rabbit, I would have said I was a rabbit.”
The video that wasn’t published was a staged suicide scene. Before filming, the terrorists beat the hostages, smashing Bohbot’s hand until it bled.
Bohbot was released two years and six days after his abduction, alongside the last surviving hostages, in an exchange deal.
"In my last week in captivity, I followed the developments regarding the agreement with Hamas on TV, just like the rest of Israel," he said. "I didn’t believe it would happen because there were many times we were on the verge of a deal, and then it all fell apart, so I didn’t want to deceive myself."
In his book, Bohbot describes the moments leading up to his release: "I reached the ladder and touched it with my hands. The ladder that would take me to the light, to Rebecca, to Ra'am. My dream is coming true.
I started climbing, one step, my eyes filled with tears, and with each step, I felt strength and power that I don’t know where I was getting from, and another step, and my eyes are teary. I feel like someone climbing to the summit of Everest. I'm going to life, I'm alive, I’m Elkana, surviving the tunnel of hell.
They put us in the trunk of a car, my eyes still covered, and the trunk closed... Finally, the car stopped, and the trunk opened... I breathe air, filling my lungs, air of the world, not the air of a tunnel."
The first thing Bohbot did when he was released was see his wife. “I told her she was my pride. She's such a hero,” he said.
Before they let him see Ra'am, Bohbot sat for two hours with the psychologist and social worker.
“I was afraid he wouldn’t come to hug me, but he ran and hugged me, and that was one of the happiest moments of my life,” he said of the moment he reunited with his son.
Bohbot was hospitalized at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer. After six days there, he returned home to Mevasheret Zion.
In his book, he writes about the first time he woke up in his house: "In the morning, the blinds rise, and I see a ray of sunshine. For a regular person, it’s a trivial matter. They don’t stop and think, 'How beautiful it is that the sun is caressing my skin.' I probably didn’t even notice that before, but now, every day when I look at the light, I say thank you that I can enjoy it. I’m learning to be thankful for everything I have in life, things I once took for granted."
Maariv asked the former hostage when he finally felt free.
"After Ran Gvili’s body was returned to Israel, I finally felt like I could breathe,” he explained.
It was an emotional moment for me. The fact that there are no more hostages, living or dead, is a huge victory. Since Ran’s return, I feel like I can finally start healing. As long as there were fallen hostages and I was in Israel, you couldn’t really begin to heal. The heart wasn’t whole. Once he returned, my heart is whole, and now I can really focus on recovery and rehabilitation, which is what I’m doing now."
Bohbot described what his life is like now, post-captivity. “I try to live each day as it comes. Every hour by the hour,” he said.
Rehabilitation is not easy, he said, describing it as a “long but moving process.”
‘I am proof that life is stronger than anything’
“Right now, my routine is rehabilitation. I spend a lot of time with psychologists, physiotherapists, and social workers. I invest a lot of time with my family, reconnecting with Ra'am, who is now 5 and a half. For two years, he didn’t have a father figure.
I meet with family and friends, and people who prayed for me. I thank them for everything they did for us. There are difficult moments, but in the end, I am proof that life is stronger than anything, and that helps me cope with those experiences, which will stay with me until my last day."
When asked if he’s in touch with other survivors, Bohbot said they are in touch every day. “No one can understand what we went through. Only we can. It’s part of our recovery,” he said.
“It’s an experience that bonds us forever. We went through a real Holocaust. When I hear Holocaust survivors tell their stories, it’s exactly what happened to us. They starved us, abused us, made us work. We had to stay alert, making sure we didn’t anger the terrorists holding us there. No light, no air, cut off from the world and family. It was like being buried and dead, with worms eating you, but you're still alive. This will stay with me for life, and I have to learn to live alongside it. There’s no other choice."
Bohbot described feelings of overwhelm when he is alone. “I have many flashbacks. Many things trigger me, like the sound of a camera that sounds to me like the weapons I used to hear in Gaza,” he described.
“Every time I put shoes on my son or wash the dishes, I remember the conditions I had in Hamas tunnels. Every person who meets me on the street asks me about the time in captivity and brings me back there in my thoughts. I wake up in the middle of the night with thoughts, memories, images of death, faces of the terrorists."
Maariv asked about the government’s handling of the hostage situation, to which Bohbot responded that he’d rather keep these opinions to himself.
‘One day, I’ll hold a Nova party there’
Finally, Bohbot was asked about fulfilling his dream of watching his favorite team, Beitar Jerusalem, play against Maccabi Tel Aviv in Teddy Stadium.
Before the game, a ceremony was held in Bohbot’s honor.
"It was one of the most emotional moments of my life,” he recalled.
“We have a wonderful nation. Everyone rallied to bring us home, and it’s important for me to thank every single person in this country. Now we need to unite and create a better country where it's fun to live.
One day, I’ll hold a Nova party there, in memory of all those killed on October 7 and the fallen soldiers who did everything to bring us back, to show our enemies that we are here and no one can defeat us or our spirit."