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It’s Wednesday in Tsur Hadassah. Yesterday Eliya Cohen was released after spending ten days in Rabin Medical Center, and before that, from spending 505 days in Hamas captivity. He and Ziv are settling into a room of their own in his mother’s home, slowly adjusting to routine after the horrors and celebrations. They unpack their cases and arrange the potted plants received as gifts. “Could you bring me my shoes, Eliya?” she calls out to him. Only days ago, this would have been a dream.
They had driven here to the sounds of Sarit Hadad, with local well-wishers waving signs and cheering them on. “Eliya and Alon Ohel, had a conversation in the Eliyas last few days in captivity, asking one another, “If you get out tomorrow and go home, what song are you putting on in the car?” Eliya wanted Sarit Hadad. Alon wants Yehudit Ravitz’s “Shir le lo Shem” (“A Song With No Name”).
And what did he want to eat?
“Shawarma. That was the first thing he asked for. He didn’t get a shawarma on the first day, but he did later on.”
'I hadn’t planned what to say'
The last time Ziv Aboud, 27, saw Eliya Cohen, 27, before he was kidnapped, was in the “Shelter of Death” at Re’im to where they fled from the Nova festival. They reached the shelter with her nephew Amit Ben Avida, and his girlfriend Karin Shwarcman.
Amit and Karin were both murdered and Eliya was kidnapped to Gaza. Ziv fought tirelessly for his return, leaving no stone unturned. Her videos garnered thousands of views online and last Purim, she walked around Hostages Square in a yellow wedding dress, waiting for the man she wished to wed.
On Valentine’s Day, she sat at a candlelit table on the Tel Aviv promenade - alone, across from an empty chair. Passers-by hugged her, but she was waiting for a hug from just one person. They had been together for seven years, and soon after he was kidnapped, his mother told her that Eliya had bought a ring and hidden it in a draw.
In Eliya’s mind, the reality awaiting him outside captivity could have been completely different. He was prepared for the worst. “The first person to meet him was the psychologist. She told him that his mother and father were waiting for him, ‘and Ziv too’. He was very emotional as he didn’t expect me to be alive.
"He says he had prepared himself for them telling him I wasn’t here. He imagined, Heaven forbid, visiting my grave for the first time. He planned his first meeting with my parents and what he would say to them. We had tickets booked to Thailand for New Year's Eve 2024. He thought he’d go on his own to fulfill my dreams.”
What was your reunion like?
“It was very emotional. I hadn’t planned what to say. Only on my way to Re’im, did I start muttering what I’d say. I wasn’t going to believe it until I saw it. I only planned what to wear at the last minute. When Raz Ben Ami met Ohad, she told him how beautiful he was and Ohad later said this had given him strength. I wanted to say something like that to Eliya, about how beautiful he was to me.
"But being Eliya, he laughed at me and said, ‘Yalla, who are you kidding?’ I bought him lots of clothes when I was in Miami as part of a delegation - a suitcase full of stuff I thought he’d like, and I left it for him on the bed. It was along the lines of what he liked before. A gift from Gucci too. Yes, he’s changed and he’s less interested in material things. I’ll give it a few months.”
What was his physical condition like when he came back to you?
“Eliya was injured in the shelter. We knew that before. We didn’t know how serious it was. He’s now limping with a cane. These should be our problems. He has shrapnel in his legs and while surgery is an option, we’re not doing it for now. We don’t want him bedridden in this condition when he needs to be surrounded with love and support.”
Were you afraid of seeing him, after we saw the condition of the hostages that came back?
“I have to say that the week after Eli Sharabi, Or Levy and Ohad ben Ami were released was the worst week for me this whole time. I broke down physically and emotionally. Their release created a kind of euphoria across the country. We’d been living under the illusion that yes, they’re in captivity, but maybe they’re being taken care of a bit – until they came out.
"It was a week and a half after that before I understood that Eliya was coming back. I can’t even think about those days. I didn’t leave the house. I didn’t even get out of bed. I hardly ate or went to the bathroom. They told me that Eliya had been with them and when I saw their condition, I thought, ‘What am I going to get?’ They prepared us for Eliya being very thin. We were looking at them, and they were very thin – so thin it shocked the country and the whole world.
"So, what was I going to get? When I saw him get out of the truck, I could breathe. He was very thin, but it was Eliya. With his facial expressions the small ways his body moves, I saw my Eliya with his head held high and a little smile, understanding he had won and that he was now out.”
What were his final days before his release like?
“Eliya says that he gained 8kg in the last week from all the food they were making him heat to make them look better than Eli, Or and Ohad. He says that, for seven months in underground tunnels, they’d split a pitta four ways.
"He says there’s no way of knowing what conditions are like now and that the things we do and say on the Israeli side very much affects the hostages - Things politicians say, Israeli comments online or popular opinion all affect how the hostages are treated and what their conditions are like. The captors talked about it. They call him 'Ben Gavir' and said they were retaliating."
"Eliya said that, in the chaos of the shelter, I kept double tapping him on the shoulder to signal I was alive, and that this gave him strength. As I thought, the last thing he saw from the terrorists’ pickup truck, was them spraying the shelter with bullets."
How did he react to your videos?
"He saw my Valentine’s Day video and the one from Purim in the yellow dress and was shocked by how daring I was. He knows me and knows it’s not easy for me to stand in front of people I don’t know and be hugged by them. He wasn’t expecting me to be alive, and definitely not what I did. He didn’t know anything about the campaign in Israel to get them back.
"He was very surprised for the first few days. He told himself he’d be coming back to nothing as I wouldn’t be alive. He’d go back to his family and would have completely rebuild his life, that he’d be anonymous and would have to look for work. He found it hard to believe that people know the hostages and talk about them. There’s still a lot to catch up on.”
Celebrating - and fighting for the hostages
On October 7, they were torn from one another’s arms. The terrorists snatched Eliya and other young people out of the shelter after they throwing grenades at it. They then sprayed it with bullets and Ziv hid underneath bodies for three hours before being rescued.
Have you managed to recap on what happened in the shelter after you were separated?
“More or less. Eliya told me things either I’d forgotten or repressed. He repeated things I said to him before, that stayed with him in his time in captivity. He said that, in the chaos of the shelter, I kept double tapping him on the shoulder to signal I was alive, and that this gave him strength. As I thought, the last thing he saw from the terrorists’ pickup truck, was them spraying the shelter with bullets.
"In no scenario he imagined, or plans for the future he made while he was in captivity, did he believe I’d be here. Eliya had no access to TV or radio. He spent his last three days in captivity with Omer Wenkert who had had media access. Omer talked about his girlfriend who was murdered in the shelter, which made Eliya think even more that I hadn’t survived.”
“When we were in the shelter, I told him I loved him and that, with God’s help, we’d get out of there, and return to the faith. These were grand words, but each of us is growing stronger in our faith in our own way. In captivity, Eliya, who comes from a religious home, prayed to himself and offered whoever was with him that they should pray out loud while others listened. They also made kiddush over water.”
Which families did he give signs of life?
“It was important for him to report signs of life as quickly as possible. On the afternoon of his release, he met up with Alon’s parents and brother and the officer taking care of them. He sat with them. To give them their privacy, we weren’t at that meeting, but he talked about how they would support one another, the conditions, chains and starvation at certain times and about how they fed them more as the release date approached.
"It’s hard knowing he left behind a brother. Eliya was the last person to see Alon. In the tunnels he also met Almog Sarusi and Ori Danino who were both later killed. He met up with Ori’s family too. Ori and Eliya told each other that as soon as they got out, they would together create a Torah scroll. He found out about Ori’s tragic death only three days ago.
"Back in Israel, when he learned what had happened to Ori, Almog and Hersch Goldberg-Polin, I could see it broke him. When they separated them, they told him they were going home and that’s what Eliya thought – that they’re here at home, that he’d see them when he got out.”
Did he remember Hersch from the shelter?
“Inside the shelter, after Aner Shapira was killed by a grenade, Hersch also grabbed an improvised explosive device that had been thrown in and tried tossing it out, but the device blew up in his hand and the shrapnel pierced Eliya’s leg.
"He remembers Hersch from the shelter. When they met in the tunnels 54 days later and he was looking at a guy with a hand missing, he said to him, ‘Hey, that’s you from the shelter’, and they made the connection. Alon was also with them in that same shelter.”
With no media access for the past year, to what extent does Eliya understand the magnitude of what happened October 7?
"Yesterday, right after the party with everyone, Eliya opened up Ziv Koren's photo book, “The October 7 War,” and was shocked by what he saw. The image that most caught his eye was the one of Sderot police station. He asked a lot of questions about what had happened in the country, and seeing that photo connected him to it all."
How hard is it for him to be happy and truly smile when he thinks about those still left behind?
"Eliya talks about how optimistic and strong Eli Sharabi was, and he was very hurt returning to such devastating news. Just like I survived and carried survivor's guilt, Eliya does to. He was lucky enough to be released to a family waiting for him while others weren’t. But there’s a time for joy and a time for grief. and we set joy aside from the war.
"For the past year and half, this is what has been guiding those of us fighting for Eliya for the past year and a half. We knew that joy opens the gates of Heaven, but we believed with all our hearts that crying wouldn’t help, but action would.
"So, we’re celebrating his return and life itself, but we’re not stopping fighting for those still there. That’s our message to Alon's family and that of Elkana Bohbot, a close friend of Eliya’s who he only found out had been kidnapped in the last three days in the tunnel before he was released."
Something that’s now sinking in is that he isn’t anonymous anymore. "I was already used to the commotion and chaos from good people coming to express their support. But for Eliya, it came as a shock after spending ten days in the hospital. He’s only beginning to understand what happened here and what people did to bring him home. In the hospital, Eliya was mainly focused on his family because that’s what he had promised himself.
"There were only a few close friends who have been there for me over this time, who also came with me to the hospital. Eliya had everything organized – the things he wanted to do as soon as he was released. He’d recited it all to himself while he was there - unfinished business from before captivity that he wanted to remember."
“He mainly promised himself that he would be with his family. Family had always come first, but now, after everything he’s been through, he has a deeper appreciation for his family. At the hospital, we would talk late into the night after the parents had gone to sleep. With all the excitement, everyone wanted their moment with Eliya. I know, that in the end, it’ll go back to being me and him most of the time.”
'For the first time in so long, we slept well'
How was the first night at home?
"For the first time in so long, we slept well. Before everything happened, we lived in a small living unit at my parents' house in Tel Aviv, but he came home to the news that I'd moved into my own apartment, which was all he’d wanted before this. For years, he’d been pushing for us to move out of my mother’s little Sarus place, but I still wanted the comfort of home. Only now that I’m totally out, I understand what he meant."
Have you had a moment to yourself? Have you let yourself break down?
"Not yet, but I’ve gotten used to it this past year. When Eliya came back, he told us everything he’d been through, and then he was desperate to know what we’d gone through. He asked each and every person he saw how they experienced October 7.
"It was important for him to know what happened here. Even in our first meeting, when I asked him how he was, he immediately asked how I was. I felt like I couldn’t begin to heal until he was back, and now, our healing begins together."
"I lost my nephew in the shelter. He was my blood. We were raised like siblings. I couldn’t even grieve or process it because I was waiting for Eliya so we could do it together. Now, that loss is gradually sinking in. In the first months, I felt very guilty about bringing my nephew Amit to parties. When Eliya came back, he felt the same way and we needed to know that my sister wasn’t angry with him.
"I understand him—I went through the same horrific torment. For closure, it was important for him to meet up with my sister, and know that she doesn’t hold him responsible. He’d imagined this meeting with my family over and over in his mind, planning every word."
Does he know that you found out about the ring and the proposal?
"On the very first day, minutes after the helicopter landed, I told him that his mother had told me about the ring, and he said, ‘Mom, you ruined the surprise.’ Right now, we’re focusing on his rehabilitation. I’m in no rush for anything. We have a whole life together ahead of us. Eliya started eating fish in captivity, and I’m excited about taking him to a seafood restaurant."
What would you now say to a woman fighting for her partner in captivity?
“I had one, very clear, thing in my mind: On October 7, people were bound together by fate. We had friends, twins murdered together, and Amit and Karin, who were a couple. Just like those shared fates existed. If I was alive and, in my body, I felt that Eliya was alive, then he’d return. We’d be together again. This was our shared fate. And faith too. Never stop believing until you know otherwise. Never give up the fight."
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