Eliya Cohen had a blunt message for his former Hamas captors and terrorists worldwide: “I won.”
That’s what Cohen, who spent 505 days in captivity in Gaza, told about 400 people at an event hosted by the Israeli mission to the United Nations on Tuesday marking the third anniversary of Oct. 7.
Television host and psychologist “Dr. Phil” McGraw moderated a discussion with Cohen and Ziv Abud, both of whom survived the Nova festival on Oct. 7.
Abud told attendees that she and others at the festival fled by car after rockets began to fill the sky and the music stopped. They crowded into a roadside shelter, which came to hold 29 people. Terrorists threw grenades inside, fired into the shelter and eventually entered, she said.
She lost consciousness after being shot in the leg and later awoke among a pile of dead bodies. She didn’t know what happened to Cohen, Abud said.
“I fought for them for 505 days without knowing anything,” Abud said, of those she lost. “It will stay with me for the rest of my life.”
She and Cohen, who recently married, now look to the future. “We are here, and we survive,” she told attendees. “We need to live a normal life.”
Dr. Phil asked Cohen what his defining emotion was after 505 days in captivity. Cohen said that he didn’t have to let anger or bitterness define him and rejected the idea that he is fundamentally different from other Israelis due to his experiences.
“I don’t count myself as special or something,” he said.
He noted that Israelis across the country continue to live with the fear of terrorism.
Dr. Phil told attendees that the psychological effects of Oct. 7 cannot simply be separated from the present.
“This isn’t Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder,” he said. “This is something that is ongoing.”
Dr. Phil described Abud’s experience lying beneath bodies for hours as almost impossible to grasp from the comfort of an air-conditioned room at the United Nations. Physical and psychological trauma continue long after an immediate event, he said.
In his remarks, Dr. Phil, who grew up in Texas and Oklahoma, also spoke about his journey toward understanding Israel and Jews.
As a kid, he had never met a Jew, and didn’t learn about Israel. As an adult, he has traveled to Israel, where he met with hostage families and released hostages, Holocaust survivors and rabbis and sought to understand the country and its people firsthand.
He told JNS that his faith has played a central role in that journey.
“Faith, for me, is a foundation,” Dr. Phil told JNS. “I think it’s the foundation for your family, and I think it’s a foundation and a moral compass of how you live your life.”
That’s especially true in trying times, he said.
Faith is “the one thing that never varies,” and a person can “lean on” it every day, he told JNS.
During his address, Dr. Phil said that Oct. 7 has become a psychological dividing line for Israelis and Jews, and time is now understood as “before Oct. 7 and after Oct. 7.”
“Oct. 7 will never be just another date,” he said.
He has seen Israeli resilience after the attack. “The one thing that struck me is their extraordinary ability to carry the memory of this immense loss, suffering and pain but at the same time live beautiful lives,” he told attendees.
Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, also addressed attendees.
“Oct. 7, Hamas tried to break us. They did not,” the envoy said. “They changed us. They wounded us. They left a scar that will never fully heal, but they did not break us.”
Danon cited Cohen and Abud as examples of that resilience. The two survived separate horrors that morning and eventually reunited and married, he said.
Abud described losing friends and the difficulty of returning to ordinary life after surviving the Nova massacre. She also said that she carries “survivor’s guilt” since Oct. 7, wondering why she came home and so many others did not.
Dr. Phil asked Cohen what he had to say to Jews and Israelis, who supported him during his time in captivity.
“Stay proud to be Jewish,” he said. “Stay proud to be Israeli.”
Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the global body, praised Cohen’s resistance to Hamas propaganda in captivity and said that the terror group tried to force him to record a video and say that he was being treated well before his release.
“He refused. He held firm,” Waltz said. “He said, ‘No.’”
Waltz also recalled how Hamas tried to use Cohen’s release as a propaganda spectacle, but again, Cohen refused to comply.
“You are a proud, strong Jew. You’re undefeated,” Waltz told Cohen.
The U.S. envoy also praised Abud for surviving the Nova massacre and for enduring more than a year without knowing if Cohen was alive. He said that Abud’s nephew, Amit, was killed at the festival after repeatedly throwing grenades back at Hamas terrorists.
Hamas’s and Iran’s efforts to isolate Israel won’t work, and the Abraham Accords are growing, Waltz said.
“Oct. 7 completely, and I think irreversibly, has backfired on Iran and all of their terrorist proxies,” he told attendees. “Peace is possible. America will stand with the Jewish people.”
“The terrorists are on their back foot,” he added.
