“In no scenario had Eliya imagined or believed I’d be here.” Released hostage Eliya Cohen was sure his girlfriend, Ziv, had been murdered by Hamas in the “shelter of death.” “Eliya said that, in the chaos of the shelter, I kept double tapping him on the shoulder to signal I was alive, and that this gave him strength. As I thought, the last thing he saw from the terrorists’ pickup truck, was them spraying the shelter with bullets.” “The first person to meet him was the psychologist. She told him that his mother and father were waiting for him, and Ziv too. He was very emotional, as he hadn’t expected me to be alive. He says he had prepared himself for them telling him I wasn’t here. He imagined, Heaven forbid, visiting my grave for the first time. He planned his first meeting with my parents and what he would say to them.” On the way Eliya and the other hostages were treated by Hamas: “Eliya says that he gained 8kg in the last week from all the food they were making him eat to make them look better than Eli, Or and Ohad. He says that, for seven months in underground tunnels, they’d split a pitta four ways.” “He says there’s no way of knowing what conditions are like now and that the things we do and say on the Israeli side very much affects the hostages – Things politicians say, Israeli comments online or popular opinion all affect how the hostages are treated and what their conditions are like. The captors talked about it.”
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