A second male Israeli hostage freed from Gaza has detailed for the first time the brutal knife-point sexual assault he suffered at the hands of his captors.
Guy Gilboa-Dalal, 24, was snatched from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, and forced into a tunnel network deep beneath Gaza, shackled, terrified and cut off from the outside world.
Now, in an emotional account, he has told how his captor turned a moment of basic hygiene into a violent and degrading attack and threatened to kill him.
Speaking about his harrowing ordeal, he said: ‘He let me take a shower and when I finished taking a shower, he drag me out of the bathroom. He would not let me put my clothes back on.
‘He took me back to their room, and then he threw me onto one of their armchairs. He started touching me all over my body and I froze.
‘I told him, “You’re joking, right? This is forbidden in Islam”. He held a rifle to my head and a knife to my throat.
‘He told me if I ever told anyone, he would kill me.’
Mr Gilboa-Dalal spoke to N12 news after spending 739 days in captivity. He was released on October 12 as part of the US brokered peace deal between Israel and Hamas.
His family revealed that while in Gaza, he suffered from several infections, lost his hearing in one ear, and developed skin problems. After he was freed, his father disclosed that he was undergoing psychological care to help him process what happened to him.
Hamas and other Palestinian militants’ huge surprise attack killed more than 1,200 Israelis and foreign nationals. The terrorists took 251 people hostage in Gaza, sparking a massive international outcry.
Mr Gilboa-Dalal’s brutal account comes after Rom Brasklavski became the first male hostage to share his shocking story of sexual abuse and reveal the dreadful nature of the horrors inflicted by the terrorists.
Mr Braslavski, 21, who was working as a security guard at the festival before he was taken, spoke about how he was held in appalling conditions while being sexually assaulted.
In a gut-wrenching televised interview, he said: ‘They stripped me of all my clothes – underwear, everything. They tied me up from my… while I was completely naked. I was torn apart, dying, with no food,’ he said.
‘I prayed to God, “Please, save me, get me out of this already.” And you just say to yourself, “What the f***?”‘
Speaking to Channel 13, he added: ‘It was sexual violence – and its main purpose was to humiliate me. The goal was to crush my dignity. And that’s exactly what he did.’
Mr Braslavski also confirmed that more abuses took place while he was held prisoner in Gaza.
‘Yes. It’s hard for me to talk about that part specifically. I don’t like to talk about it. It’s hard, it was the most horrific thing,’ he said.
‘It’s something even the Nazis didn’t do. During Hitler’s time, they wouldn’t have done things like this. You just pray for it to stop.
‘And while I was there – every day, every beating – I’d say to myself, ‘I survived another day in hell. Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to another hell. And another. And another. It doesn’t end.’ He added: ‘I came back from meeting the devil’.
Several women have revealed grim details of the sexual torture they endured in Gaza, including a woman whose breasts were cut off with a box cutter as she was gang-raped by Hamas terrorists.
A witness described how the sick group ‘threw her breast on the floor’ and played with it ‘like it was a toy’.
Some of the most horrendous images to come from Hamas’ attacks, which killed more than 1,200 innocent people, included women who had objects that had been violently lodged into their groin area.
Many of the women who went through sexual hell did not survive the attacks. Minors were also targeted by Hamas fighters.
Earlier this month, Aviva Siegal, 62, who was taken by Hamas, told the UN Committee Against Torture (UNCAT) in Geneva about how she witnessed a teenage girl being sexually assaulted.
She said: ‘I am witness to one of the girls who was with us, that the Hamas terrorist came to the bathroom, told her to get undressed, came into the shower with her, and forced her to do oral sex. And she had to smile after she did that too.
‘I am a witness of one of the girls who was forced to take a shower. She is 16 years old, she’s never ever shown anybody her body, the Hamas terrorist just stood there and stared and smiled.’
Several others have spoken about how they were held at gunpoint and beaten while being raped. Many were also threatened with forced marriages.
Hamas has previously denied the accounts of the hostages, claiming in December last year that they were ‘unfounded lies and allegations.’
Alongside sexual torture, Hamas inflicted many other forms of abuse on the hostages. Some had to watch the group eat in front of them while they languished in hunger.
Avinatan Or, 32, spoke about how he was held in near-isolation for two years and was not allowed to meet any other kidnapped people until his release.
An infamous video released by Hamas also showed how a malnourished Evyatar David appeared to be digging his own grave. He had been held with his childhood friend, Gilboa-Dalal, before Hamas ‘took him for a ride in a vehicle around Gaza.’
Others were forced to cook for their captors and subjected to psychological abuse.
Many of the hostages did not survive. Some died from ghastly wounds, while others contracted diseases they could not recover from due to a lack of medical supplies.
One soldier, who was kidnapped, described how he was beaten so severely that he lost consciousness on multiple occasions.
Eitan Yahalomi, a 12-year-old child hostage released in November 2023, described how he was beaten after arriving in Gaza and threatened with guns if he cried.
