Eliya Cohen spent 505 days chained by the leg with heavy iron chains in Gaza. His captors wouldn't let him change clothes, shower, eat, or drink on their terms. They held him in conditions designed to break a human being down to nothing.
On the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks, sitting across from Dr. Phil McGraw at a United Nations commemoration, Cohen was asked what he would say to his former captors. Two words: "I won."
Cohen was taken during the Nova Music Festival massacre, where Hamas terrorists crammed 29 people into an eight-person bomb shelter before the slaughter began. His now-wife, Ziv Aboud, was also captured at Nova. Both were released in 2025 after more than a year of captivity. They married in January 2026.
U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz spoke at the same commemoration and described what Cohen endured behind the scenes — the parts the cameras didn't capture during captivity. Hamas tried to force Cohen to record propaganda videos, the same tactic they used on fellow hostage Evyatar David.
"He refused," Waltz said. "He held firm. He said no."
They tried again.
"He refused again."
Waltz addressed Cohen directly: "Eliya, we salute you. I salute you. You are a proud, strong Jew. You're undefeated, man."
While Cohen was telling the world he won, New York City was hosting a different kind of October 7 observance. Pro-Hamas protesters took to the streets while an Israeli peace vigil gathered at Union Square. The contrast wrote itself — a man who endured 505 days of captivity, chains, and starvation declaring victory, while people who've never missed a meal in their lives cosplayed as the resistance a few miles away.
New York's Democratic Socialist mayor, Zohran Mamdani, presides over a city where both events happened simultaneously. One honored the survivors. The other celebrated the attackers. The mayor's office had nothing useful to contribute to the distinction, as reported by RedState.
Cohen didn't give a speech about geopolitics. He didn't issue demands. He didn't call for negotiations or nuance or dialogue. He sat in front of the United Nations, a man who'd been starved and chained and denied basic human dignity for nearly a year and a half, and he said the only thing that mattered.
He and Ziv got married. Hamas got nothing.
Five hundred and five days. Iron chains. No food. No shower. No change of clothes. And at the end of it — "I won."
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