World Leaders Condemn Hamas’ ‘Cruel’ Video of Israeli Hostage Evyatar David in Gaza Captivity

World leaders are speaking out after Hamas released a propaganda video on Saturday featuring Israeli hostage Evyatar David, who was kidnapped at the Nova Music Festival on Oct. 7, 2023.

The video shows David looking severely emaciated as he ticks off days on a calendar in a narrow tunnel. It also shows him being forced to dig a hole in the ground that he says will be his grave.

French President Emmanuel Macron referred to the release of the footage as “abject cruelty, an unlimited inhumanity,” which he said “embodies Hamas.”

Macron reiterated his calls for the immediate release of all hostages that remain in Gaza, saying that France has been working “to obtain their unconditional release, to promptly restore the cease-fire, and to enable the massive delivery of humanitarian aid, still blocked at Gaza’s borders.”

The French leader concluded his online post by saying: “Let there be no ambiguity. Within this political vision that we uphold, we demand the total demilitarization of Hamas, its complete exclusion from any form of governance, and recognition of Israel by the State of Palestine.”

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz also spoke out, saying that he was "appalled" by the footage.

“Hamas is torturing hostages, terrorising Israel, and using Gaza’s population as a human shield. The images show that Hamas should have no role in Gaza’s future,” he said. “There is no alternative to a cease-fire. The release of all hostages is an essential prerequisite for this. Israel will not reciprocate Hamas’ cynicism and must continue to provide humanitarian assistance.”

Kaja Kallas, the European Union’s foreign policy chief, said that the video exposes “the barbarity” of the militant group.

“Hamas must disarm and end its rule in Gaza. At the same time, large-scale humanitarian aid must be allowed to reach those in need,” she urged.

Read More: The Malnutrition Crisis in Gaza Will Outlive the War, Experts Warn

David’s family has also condemned the footage. His brother, Ilay, spoke of how the video “broke” their father.

“It's seeing your child looking like a 'Muselmann,' like in the Holocaust. Knowing that they starved him for months,” he said, adding that while their father watched the video “with great difficulty,” their mother opted not to watch the footage.

In an interview with public Israeli broadcaster Kan, Ilay said that his 24-year-old brother’s life is in “immediate danger.” In a joint statement, the David family said he had been “deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas’ tunnels in Gaza,” describing him as “a living skeleton, buried alive.”

David, a guitar and piano player who comes from a musical family, is one of an estimated 20 living hostages still being held by Hamas and other militants. Of the estimated 250 people taken during the Hamas terror attack on Oct. 7, 140 have been released during negotiations, 8 have been rescued, and the bodies of 57 who died in captivity or during rescue attempts have been recovered.

The Hamas propaganda video of David is interspersed with images of starving Palestinian children.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke with the head of the International Committee for the Red Cross in the region, Julien Lerisson, on Sunday and “asked for his involvement in the immediate providing of food and medical care to our hostages.”

This comes amid global concern over the worsening malnutrition crisis in Gaza.

The video of David was released a day after Palestinian Islamic Jihad, another militant group with ties to Hamas, released a video of another Israeli hostage, Rom Braslavski.

President Donald Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff met with the families of the hostages in Tel Aviv on Saturday, where he told them that Trump and he believe they will be “successful”  in negotiating a deal to bring all of the hostages home.

“Now we have to get all the 20 [live hostages] at the same time... we think that we have to shift this negotiation to all or nothing so that everybody comes home. We think it is going to be successful and we have a plan around it,” Witkoff said, according to Axios. “President Trump now believes that everybody ought to come home at once—no piecemeal deals. That doesn't work.”

Meanwhile, the United Nations said last week that humanitarian access to Gaza “remains severely restricted,” and the U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) director of emergencies said the level of starvation was “unlike anything we have seen in this century.”

Read More: The Tragedy Unfolding in Gaza

Gaza’s Government Media Office said that around 80 trucks had been permitted entry into Gaza on Sunday, but that more were needed.

“We affirm that the actual daily needs of the Gaza Strip amount to no less than 600 trucks of aid and fuel, in order to meet the bare minimum requirements for survival across the health, services, and food sectors,” it said in a statement on Monday.

The ongoing conflict in the region started after Hamas launched a terror attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, killing over 1,200 people and taking around 250 hostages. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, over 60,000 Palestinians have been killed since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war.