The Unbelievable Underground Escape Attempt of Israeli Hostage Evyatar David
Evyatar David spent over a year in underground captivity planning a daring escape using improvised tools. Recaptured after reaching the surface, he survived severe torture before returning to freedom.
More than a year after being kidnapped from the Nova music festival, Evyatar David was held underground in near-total isolation. None of the other Israeli hostages met him. His greatest fear was to disappear and be forgotten, to become another Ron Arad. He decided to plan and execute a complex escape attempt that took many months of work, drawing on skills acquired since childhood in the settlement of Shilo, working in construction at age 13, serving as a combat soldier in the Rimon reconnaissance unit, studying engineering at Ben-Gurion University, working as a math enthusiast and software engineer at Nvidia, and even his days as a yeshiva student who dropped his skullcap years ago.
With tools gathered along the way into his internal toolkit, he launched a breathtaking solo operation in the depths of captivity. He achieved this using a piece of wire, a stolen pickaxe, an electrical cable found by chance, and an LED lamp. That was all. He patiently dug his way out from a cell too low for his tall stature, until he could smell freedom and almost touch it. I chose not to be a prisoner in my mind, he says. I am not willing to sit and simply let others decide my fate. No matter how much my choices are restricted, within the narrowest existing space, the right to choose remains mine.
In the army, they always told us there is no such thing as one hundred percent defense, he recalls. He began searching for a weakness among his captors, and his gaze fell upon a wall of sandbags at the rear of his cell. He thrust his hand between them and was stunned. I could no longer see because it was dark, but suddenly I felt a draft of air. That is something that does not happen in a tunnel. Through conversations with his guards, he cunningly gathered details about his location in the Gaza Strip. To evade the surveillance camera, he used a garbage bag to conceal part of the cell, and then brilliantly improvised a 60-meter extension cable that allowed him to dig his way out over six months.
He had already prepared an escape bag with clothes he found and a sack on which he planned to write hostage. He also wrote farewell letters to his father and mother just in case he did not survive the operation. I also wrote a will, he recounts, revealing that he saw protests on television and realized his parents would not participate in them. That did not surprise him at all. I knew they were not caught up in the immediate moment, he says. When my parents met me, they told me they hoped I was not angry with them. I told them I am not angry, I am proud of you. A person must follow their truth even if it is unpleasant.
More than a year after his abduction, he finally managed to break his way out into freedom. Suddenly I saw a little girl with a bag walking by, and a few minutes later I saw a wagon driver passing with a horse and carriage, he says. Yet right then, after months of working only at nights to evade his captors, seeing the sky for the first time, he became confused. All warning lights flashed, but he seemed to refuse to see them. Evyatar David realized he had to return to the cell, but unfortunately, it was too late. He was recaptured and subjected to severe, unbearable torture. He remained in captivity for another full year under horrific conditions—starving, beaten, and chained to a door in a two-and-a-half-meter cell.
When one of the guards came to announce that the war was ending for him, the guard suggested he say goodbye to his parents, meet his friends for a few days, pack a bag, and travel to Europe. Do you know why? Because we will do October 7th again. As long as there is one Jew in the Land of Israel, we will slaughter you again and again. I looked at him and said, 'I am not leaving,' Evyatar recounts. He asked me why, and I told him to look at the Gaza Strip—everything here is ruin and death. When the war ends and the crossings open, will you leave for Egypt? He said no. I asked why not, and he replied, 'Because this is my home.' I told him, 'Excellent, this is my home too.'
The only documentation released in Israel during Evyatar's captivity was the video of him being abducted with his then-partner, Noa Argamani, who was rescued in Operation Arnon. After his return from captivity, they separated. In the end, we both went through a lot in these two years, each changing in our own way, and things that might have fit once no longer fit today. So it ended. And it is okay that it ended. We are moving forward, each on our own path.
