Freed hostage Segev Kalfon denounces lack of support received from Israel since release

"Even someone who was there for one day in captivity deserves to sit his whole life with a coconut in his hand on a beach in Mexico, I don’t know where, and for the state to fund everything for him... Decision-makers, they understand nothing in their lives. They’ve never seen what one day in Gaza is like, they’ve never seen what we went through," he commented.

"I sometimes sit in the car and look outside, and I say, ‘Wow, how nice it is for people who live regular lives, and they don’t even know what I’ve been through.’ They don’t know the feelings of what I’ve been through. And I can’t believe it," he added.

Kalfon further denounced politicians and their reasoning for carrying out the Israel-Hamas War following the terror group's committing the October 7 massacre.

"Why do we have to sit and pay this price? Why did this war happen on my back?" Kalfon said.

"If they had taken me out [of captivity], they should have stopped the war - but they simply did not want to because they set the priority first as this war, over human lives," he accused.

"Where is the idea of 'redeeming captives?' You are a right-wing government - where are all the religious people sitting in the Knesset? Where are all these hypocrites? Suddenly, all the Torah disappears from their minds, and all they see is how to eliminate Hamas and us," he said.

Kalfon was referring to a religious commandment requiring Jews to work towards redeeming people from captivity.

"When I say 'us,' it's because so many times they bombed me," he recalled, having experienced bombs hitting near where he was being held captive in the Gaza Strip.

"I reached a point where I said, 'Well, if I don't die by their hands, I might be accidentally killed by my own military,'" he added.

"I twice emerged from the rubble - they bombed me eight or nine times. Imagine it, I reached a point where I wanted to go into a tunnel for my own protection," he continued.

In particular, Kalfon spoke out against statements by National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, which he alleges led to him getting "beaten to death."

"I am not ashamed to say this... I reached the point where I was dying many times. I would get beaten because of him - it was purely because of him. They would tell us it was because of what Ben-Gvir was saying, and I would ask myself, 'What do I have to do with his comments?'" he recounted.

"They then would show us videos of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, and what can I say in such a situation?" he added.

Kalfon also spoke of his experiences as a captive in the terror tunnels for approximately two years, saying surviving that "hell" was not always easy.

"I lost hope many times, especially in the first year and four months," he recalled.

"I reached a point where I had plans to escape, another point where I thought I would commit suicide, because I did not want to give the terrorists the pleasure of killing me," he said.

"I knew for sure that I would die in the tunnels, whether from torture, hunger, or uncertainty, but then, after a year and four months, I received a sign from my mother. I understood it also as a sign that God wants me to continue surviving despite all the difficulties," he remembered.

At that point, he heard his mother "by coincidence" one day when he turned on a radio given to him in captivity.

"Suddenly, I hear my mother. It gave me strength - I told myself, 'no matter what, it's worth going through everything I am going through, for the people fighting for me out there.'"

Kalfon shared that he was sick for about two months last winter.

"We asked for medicine. I asked for paracetamol, and the terrorist said to me, 'Inshallah, you will die.' He did not care that we were sick. We reached a point where we were fainting," he recounted.

"I reached the point where I mentally broke down, because we had a period of about 40 days where we all had diarrhea because the food was not clean - they did not wash our trays - nothing. They would bring us rice with worms, unclean, spoiled food," he added.

Kalfon also shared how he dealt with hunger during captivity.

"I would walk in the tunnel and pull wrappers from the wall. I would find wrappers from biscuits, chocolate, and all kinds of stuff that Hamas used when they built the tunnel. I would literally open them and enjoy reading the wrapper as if I were eating the chocolate, or whatever it was," he recalled.

"I realize now that I am freed that I was in a state of madness, and we kept trying to feed ourselves the thought that we were okay, but no, we were not ok," he continued.

"Physically, I am getting better every day, but mentally, I am still carrying a lot of things," he said.

"When I was there [in the tunnels], I would dream about the outside, family, friends, and that is how I would escape from the reality that I was in. Now that I am here, my dreams are about my time there. I hear explosions at night, I see those monsters in my dreams," he added.

"I do not sleep a lot. I am receiving treatment and seeing a psychologist, but nobody has gone through what I have; nobody can really treat me. Only I know how to treat my soul," he affirmed.

He was among the 20 captives released in the initial stages of US President Donald Trump's ceasefire deal in October.

In the same interview, he recounted how terrorists played with live grenades in order to scare the hostages.