If you're hearing about Eliya Cohen's engagement to Ziv Abud for the first time, it hits like a gut punch—especially given the nightmare they endured. Eliya, 27, was kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7, 2023, attack at the Nova music festival in southern Israel. His partner of seven years, Ziv Abud, also 27, survived the same horror by hiding under bodies in a roadside shelter dubbed the "bunker of death."
After 505 harrowing days in captivity, Eliya was released on February 22, 2025, as part of a hostage-prisoner swap deal. Their reunion? Pure, tear-soaked magic.
But their story is about more than survival—it's a testament to love that refused to break.
The Night Everything Changed
October 7 started as a celebration. Eliya and Ziv, childhood sweethearts from Pardes Hanna in northern Israel, had been together since their teens. They were dancing at the Nova festival near Kibbutz Re'im when Hamas rockets began raining down. Hand in hand, they fled to a makeshift bomb shelter along with Ziv's nephew Amit Ben Avida and his fiancée Karin Schwartzman.What happened next was chaos. Terrorists hurled grenades into the shelter, killing 16 people inside, including Karin. As shrapnel flew, Eliya shielded Ziv, whispering, "Ziv, I love you" just before a blast tore through the entrance.
Bullets followed, and Eliya was dragged out by gunmen, one of four survivors taken hostage from the bunker (the others were Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Or Levy, and Eli Sharabi).
Ziv, injured and terrified, hid motionless under corpses for three hours until IDF forces rescued her.
In those final moments, as they clung to each other, Ziv later recalled feeling him being pulled away: "Eliya and I were holding each other until I felt them pulling him away from me."
A Proposal That Never Happened—Until It Did
While Ziv was fighting for her life, Eliya was loaded into a truck with the other hostages, driven into Gaza. He spent the next 15 months in tunnels, chained by the ankle, surviving on scraps like a single pita a day, enduring torture, and losing over 20 kilos (44 pounds). He had no contact with the outside world, convinced Ziv hadn't made it.
Back home, Ziv refused to give up. She became a fierce advocate, speaking at Knesset hearings, staging a solo romantic dinner on Tel Aviv's beach for Tu B'Av (the Jewish "Valentine's Day") in August 2024 to highlight missing loved ones, and even meeting Holocaust survivors to draw parallels to their resilience.
Then came the bombshell: Eliya's mother, Sigi Cohen, revealed he'd secretly bought an engagement ring weeks before October 7, planning a surprise proposal. "He told everyone except me," Ziv shared, her voice cracking.
From that moment, she proudly called herself his fiancée, wearing the ring as a symbol of their unbreakable bond.Signs of life trickled in sporadically, a chilling Hamas photo from October 7 showing Eliya in a hospital-like setting, eyes wide with fear.
