The air in Hod HaSharon, a quiet suburb north of Tel Aviv, crackled with a mixture of trepidation and fragile hope on the morning of October 13, 2025. For 738 days—nearly two full years—the David family had existed in a suspended state of agony, their lives orbiting around a single, harrowing question: Would Evyatar come home? Evyatar David, the 24-year-old gymnast whose bronzed, muscular frame once symbolized youthful vitality at the Nova music festival, had been reduced to a spectral figure in the world’s nightmares. Starved to the brink of death, his emaciated body forced to claw at the earth in a Gaza tunnel, digging what he believed would be his own grave. That image, released by Hamas in August as a grotesque propaganda tool, had seared itself into the collective conscience, a stark emblem of the barbarity endured by the last remaining Israeli hostages.

But on this sun-kissed autumn day, as the first rays pierced the living room windows of best friend Lior’s modest home—transformed into a makeshift command center for the vigil—the Davids dared to exhale. “Now we can breathe again,” Ilay David, Evyatar’s older brother, would later whisper, his voice cracking as tears streamed down his face. The room, packed with relatives, friends, and a small cadre of journalists including this correspondent from the Daily Mail, erupted into chaos when the news broke: Evyatar was free. All 20 living hostages, the final remnants of the 250 seized in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, inferno, had been handed over in a convoy of Red Cross vehicles, ferried across the battered border into Israel as part of a historic ceasefire brokered by U.S. President Donald Trump.

The scene unfolded like a script from a Hollywood redemption tale, but rawer, more visceral. Ilay, 28, a software engineer whose once-tidy beard had grown wild during sleepless nights of advocacy, clutched his phone as live feeds from the border flickered on a wall-mounted TV. His mother, Rachel, 52, a schoolteacher whose eyes had hollowed from endless vigils, gripped a faded photo of Evyatar mid-tumble on the gymnastics mat—his smile wide, unscarred by terror. Father Moshe, 55, a retired mechanic whose hands trembled not from age but from the weight of 738 unspoken prayers, paced the room, murmuring ancient blessings under his breath. Friends spilled in like a tide: cousins bearing trays of untouched fruit, neighbors with bottles of chilled Arak, and a rabbi whose chants filled the air with desperate optimism.

As the clock ticked past 10 a.m., the first group of seven hostages—Omri, 38; Matan Angrest, 22; the twin brothers Gali and Ziv Berman, both 28; Alon Ohel, 24; Eitan Mor, 25; and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, 24—emerged from the dust-choked vehicles at a military base in Re’im. Grainy footage showed them stumbling into the arms of medics, their faces gaunt masks of disbelief, hugging one another in a cluster of frail embraces. Cheers erupted in the David home, but it was tentative, a prelude. The second wave, 13 more souls including Evyatar, was moments away. “He’s there,” gasped Rachel, pointing at the screen where white vans snaked through checkpoints. “I feel him.”

The Daily Mail team—myself, photographer Avi Levy, and producer Dana Klein—had arrived at dawn, invited by the family after months of correspondence. We’d chronicled their story from afar: the protests in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square, the op-eds pleading with world leaders, the private breakdowns when Evyatar’s name trended not for hope, but horror. Now, we were witnesses to the pivot. As the convoy crested the horizon, Ilay’s phone buzzed with a secure alert from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum: “Evyatar David confirmed released. En route to Beilinson Hospital.” The room exploded. Rachel collapsed into Moshe’s arms, sobbing, “Baruch Hashem!”—Blessed be God. Ilay leaped onto the coffee table, fists pumping, roaring, “He’s coming home! Our boy is coming home!” Friends piled on in a dogpile of joy, laughter mingling with wails, the air thick with the scent of sweat and relief.

But amid the jubilation, the ghosts lingered. Evyatar’s ordeal wasn’t abstract; it was etched in every frame of that August video, a 90-second abomination that Hamas had unleashed to pressure Israel amid accusations of famine in Gaza. In it, Evyatar—pale as bone, ribs protruding like the bars of a forgotten cage—spoke in a voice rasped thin by deprivation: “I haven’t eaten for days… I barely got drinking water.” The camera panned to a shallow pit he’d been compelled to excavate with blistered hands, dirt caking his nails. “This is the grave I think I’m going to be buried in,” he said, eyes vacant, the light of the gymnast long extinguished. “Time is running out. You are the only ones who can end this.” His family, viewing it for the first time in their Tel Aviv flat, had issued a statement that echoed globally: “We are forced to witness our beloved son and brother, Evyatar David, deliberately and cynically starved in Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza—a living skeleton, buried alive.”

That footage, smuggled out via Hamas’s Al-Qassam Brigades, had ignited outrage. Israeli President Isaac Herzog decried it as “crimes against humanity,” while former hostage Tal Shoham, who shared a tunnel cell with Evyatar for eight months, told Channel 12: “He’s a shell of himself. This is starvation—pure, deliberate.” Shoham, released in a partial deal last January, described how captors feasted on stolen Israeli rations—canned hummus, dates pilfered from aid trucks—while doling out scraps to prisoners: a crust of bread, brackish water siphoned from leaky pipes. “They had air conditioning, cable TV,” Shoham recounted. “Evyatar would whisper to me at night about flipping on the pommel horse, dreaming of the arena. But by summer, even that spark was fading.”

Evyatar’s capture traced back to that fateful Saturday, October 7, 2023—a date now synonymous with slaughter. The Nova festival, a pulsating celebration of peace and trance music in the Negev desert, drew 3,500 revelers under a dawn sky streaked with promise. Evyatar, then 22, had arrived with friends, his body honed from years as a competitive gymnast for Hapoel Tel Aviv. Videos from the day show him dancing, arms flung wide, the bass thumping like a heartbeat. Then, hell descended. Hamas militants, 1,200 strong, breached the border in paragliders and pickup trucks, unleashing a blitz of gunfire, grenades, and rape that claimed 1,200 lives and maimed thousands. At Nova alone, 378 perished, their bodies strewn like discarded confetti amid the smoldering stages.

Evyatar hid in a bomb shelter with 30 others, the air choking with screams. “We could hear the laughter,” survivor Yoni Saadon later testified to Israeli police. “They were hunting us like animals.” When gunmen torched the shelter, Evyatar fled into the dunes, only to be tackled by three assailants. Zip-tied, blindfolded, he was herded onto a truck with 44 others, including festival-goers Bar Abraham Kupershtein and Segev Kalfon. The 45-minute drive to Gaza was a gauntlet of jeers and blows; one hostage recalled captors chanting, “You’re going to die like dogs.” Dumped in a shallow pit near Khan Younis, they were marched into the labyrinthine tunnels—the “Gaza Metro”—a 500-kilometer network of damp, booby-trapped corridors where Hamas had stockpiled rockets and hostages alike.

Life underground was a descent into madness. Former captives, in debriefs with Israel’s Shin Bet, painted a tableau of psychological warfare: blindfolds for days, mock executions at gunpoint, forced recitations of Koranic verses under threat of beatings. Food was weaponized—starvation as strategy. “They’d bring platters of lamb and rice for themselves,” said released hostage Avinatan Or, 32, who shared Evyatar’s cell block. “We got onions, maybe a potato if we were lucky. Evyatar lost 40 kilos; he was skin and bone.” Medical care? Nonexistent. Infections festered untreated; a diabetic hostage, Nimrod Cohen, 21, nearly lost a foot to gangrene. Sexual violence shadowed the women—threats of forced marriage, groping in the dark—part of what an all-women team of Israeli lawyers calls Hamas’s “genocidal strategy” to shatter spirits and sow trauma across generations.

For the Davids, the wait was a parallel torment. Rachel quit teaching to man the family’s “war room,” a corner of their apartment plastered with Evyatar’s photos and pleas in six languages. Moshe, once stoic, shattered during a Knesset hearing, begging lawmakers: “Bring my son before he’s a memory.” Ilay became the public face, marching in Tel Aviv with banners reading “Evyatar is Alive—Act Now!” He lobbied in Washington, buttonholing senators with dossiers of Hamas atrocities. Holidays blurred into voids: Hanukkah without Evyatar’s latke flips, Passover seders ending in silence where his chair gaped empty. Birthdays? Ilay turned 28 staring at a cake inscribed “For Ev—One Day Closer.”

The world watched, too, in fits of fury and fatigue. Protests raged from New York’s Times Square to London’s Trafalgar Square, with celebrities like Gal Gadot and Scarlett Johansson auctioning jewelry for the cause. Yet backlash brewed: accusations of Israeli “genocide” in Gaza, where 60,000 Palestinians lay dead amid rubble-choked streets. Aid agencies lambasted Israel’s blockade, though Jerusalem countered that Hamas hoarded supplies, diverting 80% of trucks to terror cells. The August video of Evyatar tipped the scales, galvanizing Trump, who—fresh from his inauguration—vowed in a Mar-a-Lago speech: “These monsters won’t break us. We’re getting our people back.” His 20-point Gaza plan, hashed in Cairo with Netanyahu, Egypt’s Sisi, and Qatar’s emir, traded 1,950 Palestinian prisoners for the 20 hostages, plus phased withdrawals and reconstruction aid. “Prayers of millions answered,” Trump beamed from the Knesset podium post-release, cigars in hand.

Back in Hod HaSharon, the vigil peaked as helicopter footage beamed Evyatar’s van landing at Beilinson Hospital in Petah Tikva. There he was—frail, yes, but upright, gesturing weakly from the window, a Red Cross blanket draped over shoulders that once bore the weight of barbells. The family piled into two cars, Ilay at the wheel, blasting Evyatar’s favorite playlist—thumping EDM from Nova. Traffic parted like the Red Sea; horns blared in solidarity. At the hospital, security formed a cordon, but the Davids breached it, sprinting down corridors lined with balloons and Hebrew banners: “Welcome Home, Hero.”

The reunion was poetry in motion—and tears. Evyatar, IV-dripped and swaddled in a hospital gown, emerged from triage, his eyes scanning the crowd. “Evy!” Rachel cried, launching herself at him. He crumpled into her, 60 kilos of fragility against her unyielding love, whispering, “Ima, I made it.” Moshe enveloped them both, his gravelly voice breaking: “My tzaddik—my righteous one.” Ilay hung back a beat, then bear-hugged his brother, the two collapsing in laughter-sobs. “You look like a ghost,” Ilay teased, “but you’re our ghost.” Friends mobbed him gently—Lior pressing a gymnast’s medal into his palm, cousins snapping selfies with shaky hands. Doctors hovered, noting Evyatar’s vitals: heart rate steady at 80, weight a perilously low 52 kilos, but spirits? Unbreakable.

As the Daily Mail cameras rolled—discreetly, with family consent—the room pulsed with stories. Evyatar, voice hoarse but steady, recounted fragments: the tunnel’s perpetual damp, the captors’ taunts (“You’ll rot here like your soldiers”), the clandestine games he invented—mental gymnastics routines to stave off despair. “I flipped in my head a thousand times,” he said, a ghost of a grin. “Kept me sane.” He spoke of bonds forged in hell: with Avinatan Or, trading jokes in whispers; with Bar Kupershtein, whose father had miraculously recovered from paralysis to greet him. “We were brothers down there,” Evyatar said. “We promised: If one gets out, he carries the others.”

Yet joy intertwined with jagged edges. Evyatar flinched at loud noises, the chopper’s whomp echoing gunfire. Nightmares loomed—therapists warned of PTSD, the “tunnel echo” syndrome afflicting returnees. Across Israel, hospitals braced for the influx: Sheba Medical Center in Ramat Gan treating dehydration and malnutrition; Wolfson in Holon addressing shrapnel wounds. One hostage, Elkana Bohbot, 36, required surgery for a fractured jaw from a beating; another, Maxim Herkin, 37, battled sepsis from untreated cuts. “They’re home, but the war’s not over,” said Dr. Roni Peleg, head of trauma psych at Ichilov. “Healing takes years—bodies mend faster than souls.”

The release rippled outward, a seismic shift in a conflict that had scarred the Middle East. In Gaza, thousands streamed north to ruined homes, chasing whispers of peace, though skepticism lingered—Hamas’s “ceremonial” handover, masked fighters waving rifles, felt more theater than truce. Palestinian families, reuniting with prisoners like Marwan Barghouti, danced in Ramallah streets, but tempered joy with grief for the 60,000 lost. Netanyahu, in a televised address, hailed it as “a path of healing,” vowing no let-up on Hamas remnants. Trump, guest of honor at a Knesset banquet, quipped over champagne: “Cigars and hugs—who the hell cares? We did it.” Yet 26 hostages remain—deceased, their bodies bargaining chips—and two more unaccounted, fueling the forum’s accusations of ceasefire breaches.

Social media, that double-edged blade, amplified the catharsis. #EvyatarHome trended with 2.3 million posts, fans splicing his hospital wave with pre-abduction clips—Evyatar soaring on rings, captioned “From grave to grace.” X users like @Ledzep2425 shared the Mail article, writing: “Tears for days. Humanity wins today.” But trolls lurked, denying the video’s authenticity, claiming “Zionist propaganda.” Ilay fired back online: “We lived it. Deny that.” The platform, once a megaphone for despair, now hummed with hope—threads of survivor testimonies, calls for accountability at the ICC.

As dusk fell on the David home, the party ignited. Tables groaned under falafel, shawarma, and Evyatar’s requested chocolate babka. A guitarist strummed “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav,” voices joining in hoarse harmony. Evyatar, propped on pillows, devoured a plate, eyes widening at flavors forgotten. “Real food,” he marveled. Rachel stroked his hair, vowing: “No more tunnels. Only skies.” Moshe raised a glass: “To life—l’chaim!” The toast echoed, a defiance against the dark.

This homecoming, though, is no endpoint. Evyatar faces rehab—physical therapy to rebuild muscle, counseling to exorcise ghosts. The family eyes a future shadowed: trials for captors, perhaps relocation for safety. Yet in that moment, as fireworks popped over Tel Aviv—Israel’s spontaneous salute—the Davids breathed free. “We were buried with him,” Ilay reflected, arm around his brother’s shoulder. “Now we rise together.”

Evyatar’s story, from festival fire to familial firelight, embodies resilience’s raw poetry. In a world fractured by hate, his return whispers: Miracles happen. Not through spells, but stubborn love. As Trump might say, it’s a “beautiful day, a new beginning.” For the Davids, it’s simply home.