Released hostage Yarden Bibas was informed of his wife and children’s death in Gaza by Hamas while he was on camera. The terrorist organization filmed him visibly breaking down but then told him that ultimately, Shiri, Ariel, and Kfir’s deaths did not matter.
“They were murdered in cold blood. Bare hands,” he told 60 Minutes’ Lesley Stahl in a Sunday evening interview. “They [Hamas] used to tell me ‘It doesn’t matter. You’ll get a new wife, new kids. Better wife, better kids,” he said, adding that his captors repeated the statement many times.
An expansive interview on 60 Minutes featured Bibas, Keith and Aviva Seigel, Tal Shoham, and the parents of Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal.
For Bibas, his first interview with media since his release was an opportunity to catch the ear of US President Donald Trump, who he believes can end the Israel-Hamas war and bring the hostages home. He told Stahl that he was released because of the US administration’s efforts.
“I know he can help. I’m here because of Trump. I’m here because of him,” he said. “I think he’s the only one who can stop this war again. He has to convince Netanyahu, to convince Hamas, I think he can do it.”
When asked if he had anything specific he wanted to tell the US president, Bibas pled for the remaining hostages’ release.
“Please stop the war and help bring all the hostages back,” Bibas said. He mentioned earlier that he believed that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s decision to resume the war in Gaza would not bring the remaining hostages home.
ירדן ביבס בפרומו לראיון שהעניק לתוכנית “60 דקות”: “אני פה רק בגלל טראמפ, אני יודע שהוא יכול לעזור”@itamargalit (מתוך “60 דקות”, באדיבות סלקום TV) pic.twitter.com/0DaGRSvsX1
— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) March 30, 2025
Bibas calls for hostage release
In the interview, Bibas wore a shirt with pictures of brothers David and Ariel Cunio, his longtime friends and neighbors from Kibbutz Nir Oz.
“This is David, I’ve known him since first grade, and this is his younger brother, Ariel,” Bibas said, pointing to his shirt.
A hostage released in the first phase of the deal confirmed to the Cunio family that David is still alive and in Gaza, Ynet reported in February.
“We did everything together. He was with me in every big thing in my life,” Bibas said. “He was in my wedding, and now, probably the hardest thing that I have to move [on] with my life, and David is not with me.”
He emphasized that he was worried for the Cunio brothers’ safety, and that he was desperate to get them home to their families.
“I lost my wife and kids. Sharon [Cunio] must not lose her husband.”
Bibas told 60 Minutes that he was mostly held underground in the tunnels and that IDF airstrikes terrified him.
“It’s scary. You don’t know when it’s gonna happen, and when it happens, you are afraid for your life. The whole earth would move, like an earthquake, but underground. So everything could collapse any moment.”
Keith and Aviva Seigel’s story
Keith and Aviva Seigel recounted their capture on October 7 to 60 Minutes inside of their destroyed house in Kibbutz Nir Oz.
“I stood here, and they pushed me out of the window while I had to go all the way there,” Aviva Siegel said, standing at the window of the house. “I was in shock.”
“We were driven into Gaza and then taken into a tunnel, feeling in danger, feeling life-threatened, terrorists around us with weapons,” Keith Seigel said. “We were gasping for our breath.”
He also detailed the abuse he witnessed and encountered during his time in captivity.
“I witnessed a young woman who was being tortured by the terrorists. I mean literal torture, not just in the figurative sense,” he said, adding that the Hamas terrorists made him watch the events.
“I saw sexual assault with female hostages.”
Seigel notedhis condiditons in captivity got worse after Aviva Seigel was released in the first temporary ceasefire in 2023.
“The terrorists became very mean and very cruel and very violent, much more so [than before the 2023 ceasefire]. They were beating me and starving me,” he said.
“Do you think they starved you or they just didn’t have food?” Stahl asked.
“No, I think they starved me, and they would often eat in front of me and not offer me food.”
He also corroborated what many released hostages have said about hygiene conditions in Gaza, and said that he was only allowed to take a bucket bath once a month.
He then confirmed CBS’s question about how Hamas had shaved male captives’ heads and genital regions.
“I think they thought it, it amused them, or, y’know, humiliated [us]. I felt humiliated.”
Seigel told Stahl that he felt “completely dependent” on his captors, and that he believed that they used that to torture him psychologically.
“I was left alone several times, and I was very, very scared that maybe they won’t come back, and I’ll be left there. What would I do then?” he said. “So maybe that was a way for them to torture me in that way. I’m pretty sure they knew I wouldn’t dare to do that [escape] because I needed them.”
Hostage families hear a survivor’s story
The interview also featured a segment with released hostage Tal Shoham, who spoke of his time in captivity with Evytar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal to their respective parents.
Shoham told the families that it took Gilboa-Dalal days to accept his new reality.
“One moment, he’s like, partying in the Nova, the second moment he’s in the worst place in the world. It took him five or six days just to stop crying,” Shoham said.
He also detailed how the three of them were beaten every day, held in cramped tunnels, and given tiny amounts of food to split.
Shoham explained how they were able to get favors out of the guards and told a story about giving a guard massages to get better food.
“The exchange was that would get massage every day, and he would bring us more food, and different food, a can of tuna, sardines.”
He noted that both young men struggled with their mental health while in captivity, and expressed suicidal thoughts to him.
“One of the toughest things I heard from them [David and Gilboa-Dalal], they told me more than once that ‘Why stay alive now? I mean, why not jut take their own life with their own hands and finish it and get released from it,'” he recounted.
“They are not children, but from time to time, I felt like a father to them. I really fear that they are now alone.”
The families noted their concerns over the two hostages’ mental health states. David’s mother noted that the two boys would likely create a pact of sorts, if needed.
“They would do it together, if they decide to do it,” she said.
Gilboa-Dalal and David’s families said that they wanted everyone to hear stories from captivity in the hopes that someone would save their sons.
“Maybe someone would hear it, and it will save our sons,” David’s mother said.
The full interview aired at 7 p.m. EST (2 a.m. UTC) on CBS.
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