JERUSALEM, Israel – A disturbing new video from Hamas is drawing international outrage and condemnation.
The footage shows two Israeli hostages, emaciated and desperate. It marks another urgent step in getting the hostages released and is met with support from President Trump’s Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff, who just returned from Israel, and House Speaker Mike Johnson, who is now in Israel.
The propaganda video, released by Hamas on Saturday, shows 24-year-old Evyatar David barely able to stand. He points out the multiple days he hasn’t been fed, and digs what he describes as his own grave.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared, “You see them wasting away in a dungeon. But the Hamas monsters surrounding them have everything they need to eat. They are starving them the way the Nazis starved the Jews.”
Former Israeli hostage Tal Shoham confirms that David was held in the same tunnel complex where he was kept. He says terrorists enjoyed air conditioning, cable television, and plenty of food taken from aid deliveries.
“Even when I was there, it was a severe vitamin C deficiency,” Shoham said. “It’s really, really a dangerous disease. And from looking on him now, I really think that he doesn’t have more than a few days to live in such conditions.”
The video comes days after similar footage of 21-year-old Rom Braslavski, a German-Israeli captive, who said he was suffering unbearable pain and could not stand or go to the bathroom.
European leaders, including the European Union, France, and Germany, have condemned the clips, saying Hamas must disarm and have no role in Gaza’s future.
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In Jerusalem, White House Envoy Steve Witkoff met with hostage families, telling them President Trump wants to broker a ceasefire that will return all remaining hostages.
Ruby Chen, father of U.S.-Israeli hostage Itai Chen, stated, “We feel that Mr. Witkoff is very much with the families. He feels us, understands us. And he said that he’s going back to Washington, where he will share these stories with the president himself. And he has no other mission that the president has prioritized more than getting a hostage deal for all the 50 hostages to come back.”
Netanyahu urged the International Committee of the Red Cross to intervene with food and medical care.
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Johnnie Moore, chairman of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, speaking on Fox News Sunday, slammed the United Nations for complaining about Israel’s aid to Gaza, but not helping.
“We don’t want to argue with the United Nations, even though they don’t pick up their own food, they don’t deliver their food by their own statistics, 90 percent of the time,” Moore charged. “And it’s unbelievable, like to just say, ‘Oh, 95 percent of the trucks don’t make it, but we have to do better.’ That’s unacceptable. That’s the United States’ money. That’s European money.”
House Speaker Mike Johnson is in Jerusalem. He met with Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar and visited the Western Wall. “Our prayer is that America will always stay with Israel, and that we will. We pray for the preservation and the peace of Jerusalem. That’s what Scripture tells us to do,” Johnson noted.
Just yards from the Western Wall, atop the Temple Mount, Israel’s National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir led Jewish worshipers on Tisha B’Av (the ninth of the month of Av in Hebrew) in mourning the destruction of Jerusalem’s First and Second Temples.
He observed, “And I say from here, of all places, we should send a message and make sure that today itself, we conquer the whole of the Gaza Strip.”
