First In-Depth Interview
"I Accepted I Would Die - and That Kept Me Alive": Eitan Mor Opens Up About Surviving Hamas
Newly freed survivor of the Nova massacre, 28-year-old Eitan Mor breaks his silence in a searing interview detailing his abduction by Gazan civilians, the brutal conditions inside Hamas’ tunnels, and the nightly gratitude ritual that kept him alive through nearly two years of captivity.
Eitan Mor, 28, who spent nearly two years in Hamas captivity after being abducted from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, has given his first full account of the kidnapping, the hunger in the tunnels, and the psychological survival tools that kept him going.
In a powerful interview published today in the Hebrew weekly Makor Rishon, Mor recounts the chaos at the festival: “We saw groups of Gazans arriving with knives – ‘uninvolved civilians’ who decided to get very involved. I told people not to run back toward the party; we could see fires and hear shooting. I messaged my friend Elyakim Libman, who was later murdered in the medical tent. That was the last message I ever got from him.”
Mor and another festival-goer, Rom Braslavski (also later kidnapped), tried to move bodies of murdered women out of sight. “Some were already half-undressed, and I didn’t know what else they would do to them.”
After escaping an initial Hamas squad that opened fire on them, Mor was finally caught by a mob of eight Gazan civilians, some of them children no older than third grade, armed with knives, saws and hammers. “They beat me with everything they had. One held a knife to my throat. Their leader said in English: ‘You die now or you come with us to Gaza.’ I said ‘Gaza.’”On life underground: “Your brain only thinks about food. You try to picture your family, but somehow you end up imagining the taste of your grandmother’s meatballs.
Still, every single night we forced ourselves to say thank you – thank you that the pita didn’t have sand in it today, thank you for the tiny cup of tea, thank you that we are still alive and in one piece, even if I lost 15 kilos.”
Mor says the turning point was accepting death: “At first I was optimistic. Later I realized neither Hamas nor our government would back down. The moment I truly accepted that I would either die in Gaza or return after many years, something lifted. That acceptance let me live in the moment and saying thank you every evening for one more day of life.”