October 7 · Personal story
Evyatar David
Abducted
October 7, 2023
Abduction location
Nova festival near Re’im
Current outcome
Released alive · October 13, 2025
Released alive on October 13, 2025, after 738 days in captivity.
01
Life before
The Collectif du 7 octobre profile gives Evyatar David’s birth date as December 24, 2000, says he is from Kfar Saba, and names his parents Galia and Avishai and siblings Ilay and Yaela. It describes music as central to him: he played acoustic and classical guitar and hoped to work in music production or teaching. The profile also calls him lively and surrounded by friends. David attended the Nova music festival in the Negev desert on October 7, 2023, with childhood friend Guy Gilboa-Dalal. Later reporting identifies two of their friends, Ron Tzarfati and Idan Haramaty, among those killed at the festival.
02
October 7
When gunfire reached the Nova festival, David and Gilboa-Dalal tried to escape. Their account in a July 2026 interview describes the two friends finding one another and being taken away in a pickup truck. They were abducted on October 7, 2023. The Jerusalem Post identifies their friends Ron Tzarfati and Idan Haramaty as killed during the attack, a loss that formed part of what the two carried into captivity. David and Gilboa-Dalal remained together through much of their captivity, though their captors later separated them.
03
Captivity
David said that for the first two weeks, he and Gilboa-Dalal sat in different corners of the same room; captors forbade them to speak or make eye contact. They wanted to reassure one another but could not. Later they argued over tiny portions of food and water, then found compromises that helped them remain together. David described hunger throughout captivity. Extreme starvation began about three months before the August 2025 propaganda video in which captors made him dig what they called his grave. Before filming, captors compared the two friends’ emaciated bodies and selected David. They took him to a separate tunnel and ordered him to dig; he believed he was being led to his death.
04
Return
David was released alive on October 13, 2025, after 738 days in captivity, according to the Jerusalem Post interview. He and Gilboa-Dalal had shared much of their time in captivity; their captors separated them after the grave video was filmed. In July 2026, the childhood friends sat together for their first joint interview and recalled the silence, hunger and abuse they had endured. David described their shared fate and the relief of being able to speak to one another again.
05
Aftermath
On July 30, 2026, David posted a message about recovery. He wrote that thoughts of his parents, family and friends, and hope that no one would give up on him, helped him endure captivity. He described PTSD and flashbacks, thanked people who welcomed him home, and said he hoped to marry and start a family. He also wrote that surviving captivity and recovering were separate struggles.