Ex-hostage Tal Shoham describes captivity to UN: ‘Sadistic guards tortured us daily’
Released captive tells officials he was held with ‘human skeletons’ Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Evyatar David; describes starvation, extreme thirst, beatings as terrorists enjoyed ‘plentiful food’
Released hostage Tal Shoham visited the United Nations offices in Vienna on Friday, where he described the horrific conditions of those held in Gaza alongside a plea for the gathered diplomats to work for the release of the remaining captives.
Shoham spoke alongside the families of hostages Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David, with whom he was held.
“While we sit here in beautiful Vienna, they remain in Hamas tunnels, 20 meters underground, crying out to us from their dungeon,” Shoham said in an appeal to dozens of diplomats. “I implore you to listen, to act.”
Shoham urged the officials to use their positions to advocate for the release of all remaining 59 hostages, 24 of whom are believed to be alive.
“Forty days ago, I was born for the second time,” Shoham said of his recent release. “Forged from Hamas’s terrible cruelty. Emerging from hell into the sanity of a civil nation.”
He said that during his 505 days in captivity, he “had to turn inward, finding strength from within” in order to survive.
“Speaking here today is not something I would have imagined doing in my previous life,” Shoham acknowledged.
Briefing by the Israel Mission to @UN_Vienna. Freed #Hamas hostage Tal Shoham tells his story with the families of Guy Gilboa-Dalal and https://t.co/q4LXZSzZe7
— Israel at UN, OSCE & Intl Organizations in Vienna (@ILMissionVienna) April 4, 2025
“I’m here because I believe each and every one of you sitting here today has power. Power that can be used to accelerate the return of my brothers still held hostage in Gaza,” he said.
“I’m here today to motivate you to do what desperately needs to be done. To use whatever tools you have to pressure the release of the hostages. As individuals, we may not have this power, but as a community, especially as representatives of the United Nations, you definitely have this power,” he said.
Today, the Permanent Mission of ???????? & Permanent Representative Ambassador @DavidRoet held a deeply moving briefing at the @UN_Vienna, by Tal Shoham and the Dalal and David families.
Tal shared the unimaginable ordeal of being held hostage by Hamas for 505 days. He urged the… pic.twitter.com/Lozh4MNJrB— Israel at UN, OSCE & Intl Organizations in Vienna (@ILMissionVienna) April 4, 2025
Shoham called for “moral clarity” regarding Hamas, arguing that “what fuels Hamas” is “moral confusion, and a failure to take an unambiguous position against terrorism, and against the use of human beings as bargaining chips.”
“As long as the world implicitly accepts terrorism as a legitimate political tool through non-intervention,” he said, “peace in the Middle East remains impossible, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will never end.” But when terror groups are no longer tolerated, peace will be possible, he said.
After Shoham spoke, he played the Hamas propaganda video, shot during his own release, in which captors are seen bringing Gilboa-Dalal and David to the site of his hand-off to the Red Cross, forcing the captives to watch him go free while they remained in captivity.
Gilboa-Dalal’s father and David’s mother also spoke briefly, reiterating the same call for action to free their sons.
Shoham offered the room a blow-by-blow account of his time in captivity, starting from the final, peaceful days leading up to October 7, 2023, and ending with his release, when he was forced to leave behind Gilboa-Dalal and David.
He told them how he and his wife and children made the two-and-a-half hour drive down to Kibbutz Be’eri on October 5, to spend a long weekend with his wife’s parents, Shoshan and Avshalom Haran.
His parents-in-law were among the approximately 1,200 people murdered by Hamas-led terrorists during the onslaught, as 251 were taken hostage, triggering the ongoing war.
Shoham recalled hiding in a safe room on October 7 with his family as rocket sirens sounded amid the barrages from Gaza.
Terrorists broke into the room, kidnapping Tal, and separately, his wife Adi, and their two children, Yahel, then 3, and Naveh, 8. The mother and children were released during the weeklong truce in November 2023.
“For fifty days, I did not know what had happened to my family,” Shoham recalled. He said he spent those first fifty days “in isolation, shackled, and starved.
“It was not ordinary hunger, but survival hunger, where a crumb becomes your entire world, where your body [aches] constantly from hunger pains. Thoughts of my family hurt even more, giving me no peace,” he said.
On the fiftieth day, his Hamas captors brought Tal a letter from Adi, informing him that she and the kids had also been kidnapped but would soon be released amid the deal.
This gave him the strength to survive the rest of his captivity, he said.
Gilboa-Dalal and David were ‘human skeletons’
“On day 34, two human skeletons entered my room,” he said, referring to Gilboa-Dalal and David who were held alongside him for the remainder of his captivity.
Childhood friends Gilboa-Dalal and David were taken hostage at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.
“Guy and Evyatar told me about their 34 days bound with zip-ties, that cut into their hands and flesh, leaving scars they still bear today. Days when they were beaten and forced to sit facing the wall, with bags over their heads, unable to move.
“Their thirst was so intense that they would drink the salty, foul-smelling toilet flush water, contaminated with metals and filth,” he said.
“From that day until my last day in captivity, we were together, suffering physical and mental torture.”
“During my 505 days in captivity, we were rarely not starving. There were many times when we received just one pita bread for an entire day. We begged our captors, flattered them, even agreed to give them massages- anything for another crumb of food.
“Traumatized by hunger, we collected crumb after crumb, dividing every grain of food after careful counting. Guy would sometimes spend an hour ensuring the fairest distribution of every ounce,” he recalled.
“You might assume this is the situation throughout Gaza, but the terrorists holding us always had abundant food, including fresh vegetables and fruits,” he noted.
“For the final eight and a half months of my captivity, we were held in a dungeon, dozens of meters underground. One meter wide and twelve meters long, four men, with only a hole serving as a toilet, sealed by an iron door,” he said.
“The humidity left our clothes and mattresses perpetually wet. We sweated and choked from lack of oxygen, in conditions so deplorable no animal had ever been kept this way. We were constantly hungry and thirsty.”
Shoham noted that at one point, “severe vitamin C deficiency caused Evyatar and me to develop muscle inflammation. For a month and a half, we lay completely immobile.”
“Sadistic guards tortured us daily, both physically and mentally. Sometimes, we were in a darkness so profound we could not see our hands in front of our faces.
“Meanwhile, next door, Hamas terrorists enjoyed a well-lit, air-conditioned room, with plentiful food.”
The Times of Israel Community.