In a heartbreaking address before the United Nations Security Council on Tuesday evening, Ilay David, the brother of Israeli hostage Evyatar David, delivered an emotional appeal, warning world leaders that his brother and other hostages held in Gaza by Hamas are on the brink of death.

Speaking just days after new footage emerged showing emaciated hostages, including Evyatar and Rom Breslevsky, Ilay stressed what life is like in Hamas captivity. “They only have days left. Days!” he told delegates. “My brother weighs about 40 kilograms. He looks like a skeleton. He could barely move or speak. He was forced to dig his own grave.”

The gut-wrenching video, released by Hamas over the weekend, has triggered a wave of horror in Israel but garnered little global condemnation. In the footage, Evyatar David appears frail, visibly abused, and forced to recite scripted propaganda while his captors film. One terrorist’s hand—“thicker than my brother’s leg,” Ilay noted—briefly enters the frame, underscoring the grotesque disparity between the captors and their victims.

According to medical experts, many of the remaining living hostages have lost half their body weight and are suffering from prolonged starvation. “Hamas has food. The hostages do not,” Ilay said. “They are deliberately being starved. It is a war crime—an act of systematic, calculated cruelty.”

The testimony comes amid growing frustration in Israel over the international community’s deafening silence. Despite the UN’s swift condemnation of Israeli operations in Gaza, the crimes against hostages—many of whom are civilians—have drawn only muted reactions.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, who convened the session, castigated the global body for its “complicity through silence.”

“I came here because our hostages are being tortured in tunnels while the world looks away,” Sa’ar said. “Evyatar was forced to dig his own grave. It is diabolical. Yet some nations continue to pressure Israel instead of the terrorists who caused this war. Aid flows into Gaza while the hostages haven’t received a crumb.”

Sa’ar also warned against what he called “free gifts” being handed to Hamas through premature recognition of a Palestinian state. “The terrorists are emboldened when the world rewards them while ignoring their atrocities,” he said. “International pressure must target Hamas—not the country trying to rescue its citizens.”

The session was called in response to a psychological campaign by Hamas and Islamic Jihad, which have released several hostage videos aimed at manipulating both Israeli society and international diplomacy.

French President Emmanuel Macron was the first world leader to comment—three days after the footage surfaced—calling Hamas’ actions “appalling cruelty.” The UK and Cyprus followed with their own condemnations, but global outrage has remained strikingly tepid.

UK Foreign Secretary David Lammy called the hostage videos “sickening,” but tied his statement to demands for an immediate ceasefire and broader political conditions, including recognition of a Palestinian state.

For the David family, such equivocation is unbearable. “My mother hasn’t stopped crying. My father can’t sleep,” Ilay told the chamber. “What would you do if it were your son, your brother, your father?”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)