Chilling New Details
Freed Hostage Segev Kalfon Reveals How He Refused to Appear in Hamas Propaganda Video
Segev Kalfon, kidnapped from the Nova music festival and held in Gaza for two years, recounts the beatings, psychological torment, and moments of defiance that helped him survive captivity.
Just over a week after returning home from two harrowing years in Hamas captivity, 27-year-old Segev Kalfon has shared chilling details of his ordeal in Gaza.
In an interview with Ynet and Yedioth Ahronoth published Tuesday, Kalfon revealed that Hamas terrorists tried to force him to appear in a propaganda video, but he refused. “They gave me a script to read,” he said, “but I played a bad actor on purpose.”
According to Kalfon, his captors wanted him to claim he was trapped under a collapsed tunnel, starving, and in danger of dying. “I didn’t say it,” he recalled, “because I thought of my parents and my family.”
Kalfon described how his name itself became a source of danger. When he told the terrorists his name, “Shagev,” they beat him violently, mistaking it for the Arabic word ‘ceiling’. “They didn’t believe me,” he said. Eventually, they began calling him “Steve,” and he decided not to correct them. “I knew if I corrected them, I’d be beaten again. That’s when I understood, I’m a prisoner.”
He also recounted life inside the tunnels: “You become a rat. Nothing from the life you had above exists anymore.”
Kalfon, from Dimona, was abducted from the Nova festival on October 7 as he tried to flee across Route 232. Hamas gunmen caught and dragged him into Gaza. His family received proof of life through other freed hostages months later, describing his dire conditions.
After multiple prisoner exchanges, Kalfon finally returned home last week. His story adds a raw, human glimpse into the hidden suffering of those still held in Gaza’s tunnels and the quiet resilience of those who made it back.