Eliya Cohen is a survivor who can’t yet bring himself to live again. He hid under bodies as Hamas militants hurled grenades into a bomb shelter before they took him prisoner. He lived through 505 days of captivity in Gaza, chained and sharing scraps of pita and canned beans with other hostages. And he was released to his joyful family – and to find his girlfriend alive and waiting for him.
But six months after he got out of Gaza, he says he cannot begin to recover. Not while other hostages are still held there.
“I feel guilty when I eat. I feel guilty when I get showered. I feel guilty when I go to the hospital,” he told CNN in an exclusive interview with Chief International Correspondent Clarissa Ward. “I feel guilty because I know what they are going through right now.”
He recognizes he must work to heal the physical and mental wounds, but thoughts of the last 20 living hostages in Gaza weigh on him every day, he says, brethren from a family he cannot let himself forget.
Cohen was at the Nova music festival with his girlfriend Ziv Abud the morning of October 7, 2023, when Palestinian militants broke through Gaza’s border fence under a hail of accompanying rockets from Hamas and other groups who took part in the attack.
