Content warning: This article discusses sensitive topics such as sexual assault.
Former Gaza hostage Guy Gilboa-Dalal revealed the psychological toll from the sexual abuse he suffered during more than two years in Hamas captivity in an interview for Taboo on Kan 11 three years after the October 7 Massacre.
Gilboa-Dalal was certain his life would be "perfect" the moment he returned home. "You think to yourself, when you're in captivity, 'I'll come back, and it will basically be perfect.' But when you are there, you aren't aware of the rehabilitation process that you have to go through when you return," he reflected.
"You get home, you go to sleep, and the captivity comes back to you. There are actual nightmares of the kind that hurt me, and I run for my life," Gilboa-Dalal shared.
'Is this my fault? Did I do something wrong?'
He described the night terrors that plague him as a result of the trauma and sexual assault he endured at the hands of one of his captors: "I have many nightmares about the guy who sexually assaulted me. When I was there, I had so, so many thoughts running through my head of... 'Is this my fault? Did I do something wrong?', and I know that many people who go through this, those thoughts cross their minds too. And many choose not to talk about it."
Later, he recounted the threats he received from that same sexual assailant, who tried to silence him: "It is very, very hard, and for me it was even harder because we had a camera on us 24/7. Because of that, I couldn't even tell my friends there about what I went through, about the sexual assault, because that guy told me he would hear everything, and I was terrified to talk about it."
"I did find a way to tell Tal, in very broad strokes, about what happened, because I knew he was going home, and it was important to me that if I didn't come back alive, he would tell my family," he shared.
Gilboa-Dalal was abducted from the Nova festival on October 7, 2023, and was held captive by Hamas in the Gaza Strip for over two years. Throughout the captivity period, he was moved between various positions in tunnels underneath Gaza, held under harsh conditions, and suffered from starvation, threats, and abuse. He returned to Israel in October 2025, after 738 days in Hamas captivity.