Hamas Forces Emaciated Israeli Hostage To Dig His Own Grave

A new propaganda video released by the terrorist group Hamas shows an emaciated Israeli hostage seized on October 7, 2023, being forced to dig his own grave.

The roughly five-minute clip shows Israeli hostage Evyatar David in a tunnel barely high enough for him to stand, “crossing off dates on a calendar and digging a grave,” the New York Post reported.

How psychopathic is Hamas?

It forced starving hostage Evyatar David to DIG HIS OWN GRAVE for the cameras. pic.twitter.com/iMa404St4s

— Eylon Levy (@EylonALevy) August 2, 2025

“I haven’t eaten for a few days in a row,” David says weakly in the video. When someone behind the camera filming him hands him a can of beans, David says, “This can is for two days. This whole can is for two days so that I don’t die.”

“This is the grave I think I’m going to be buried in. Time is running out,” he adds.

“We are forced to witness our beloved son and brother, Evyatar David, deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza — a living skeleton, buried alive,” David’s family said in a statement sent to the Hostages Families Forum Headquarters. “The deliberate starvation of our son as part of a propaganda campaign is one of the most horrifying acts the world has seen.”

“Hamas terrorists deliberately starve our hostages, documenting them in a cynical, humiliating, and malicious manner,” reacted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Iran-backed Hamas terrorists have held innocent people hostage, starving them for 666 days,” Florida GOP Sen. Rick Scott said. “Just look at these photos — it’s gut-wrenching. Every day that goes by is a risk to their lives. We cannot stop until every hostage is home and Hamas is destroyed.”

“This is vile. Where are all those demanding Israel end this war now?” New York GOP Rep. Mike Lawler declared. “Where are all those decrying the humanitarian crisis now? The only entity for the devastation that has been inflicted upon innocent Israelis and Palestinians is Hamas. Period. Full stop.”

Forcing Jews to dig their own graves was common during the Nazi Holocaust of the Jews in World War II. As the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum notes:

Often referred to as an Aktion, a massacre typically began when Jews and other victims were rounded up or ordered to report to a central destination. The victims were then marched or transported to the killing site. If a mass grave had not already been dug, the victims were forced to dig one. They were stripped of clothes and valuables and driven in groups to the pit. The Einsatzgruppen  and their assistants either shot the victims at the edge so that they fell in, or forced them into the grave to be shot. Friends and families often had to watch their loved ones die before them.

Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images