Mike Waltz fights back tears revealing what Hamas hostage refused to do before release

UNITED NATIONS — Three years after the worst massacre in Israel’s history, Eliya Cohen — who survived 505 days in Hamas captivity — took the stage at the United Nations alongside his newlywed wife, Ziv Abud, a survivor of the Nova music festival massacre, and tried to explain to some of the world’s top diplomats what he had endured.

"They didn't let me change clothes or to get a shower, even to eat or to drink," he said.

"They chained me with heavy iron chains by my leg," Cohen said during an emotional discussion moderated by Dr.

Phil McGraw at Israel’s U.N. commemoration Tuesday.

He said lights were kept on to prevent the hostages from sleeping and that captors would enter repeatedly during the night screaming in an effort to frighten them.

Cohen said they were not permitted to use a restroom and that at times survival felt almost impossible.

FREED HOSTAGE ROM BRASLAVSKI DETAILS ABUSE, STARVATION DURING 738 DAYS IN GAZA CAPTIVITY But he described repeatedly forcing his mind away from the violence and toward the possibility of returning home.

"Don't think about the violence.

Don't think about the torture.

Don't think about everything," Cohen recalled telling himself.

"Just continue, stay strong.

And maybe one day, you will come back home to your family." Cohen was among the 251 people abducted during the Hamas-led Oct.

7, 2023, attack , when about 1,200 people were killed in southern Israel in their homes and at the Nova Music festival.

It was the deadliest single day in Israel’s history.