Former Hamas hostage overcome with emotion as he visits London's Nova Festival exhibition: 'It's taking me back to that day'

The Nova Exhibition has been set up in the capital for a six-week run and provides an in-depth remembrance of the brutal massacre at The Nova Music Festival on October 7th, 2023.

The exhibit also features personal items of the victims who attended the festival and scorched, bullet-ridden vehicles.

Telling GB News of his reaction to the exhibition, Mr Bohbot said: "For me, it's not easy. For sure, it's not easy. What you see here, everything I saw with my own eyes, and it's not easy for me.

"It's very hard, I had a cry, and when I came here, it felt like it took me back to October 7."

Mr Bohbot said the exhibition makes visitors "feel something different" to just seeing footage of the horrors on television.

He said: "You see the cars, the tents and the sunglasses, the shoes, and you feel it. It's different to when you see something on the channel in your house than when you come to this exhibition.

"And it is very important, especially for me, because I was at the festival. I've come to London for the first time in my life, and it's not easy, really."

Having been held hostage by Hamas for 738 days, Mr Bohbot told Will of the torture and horrors he experienced.

Mr Bohbot recalled: "Still today, I cannot believe it happened, but it was terrible inside. 738 days with no food, no pills when you're sick, no water, no clothes.

"I saw myself for the first time after two years, I saw my face after two years. It was horrible, it's crazy, and you don't know if you're going to be alive from one minute to the next. It is a crazy situation."

He added: "When you're inside the tunnel, 738 days without sunshine, no air, no light, and you have to survive. Many bombs dropping around you and rockets, and terrorists holding you and keeping you there."

Mr Bohbot also spoke of the psychological torture he received by Hamas, who told him every day that his wife and young son had died in the October 7 attack.

He told GB News: "He touched exactly the point that was traumatic for me. For me to survive was to think of my family, my wife and my son waiting for me. I left him when he was three years old, and now I'm back to him, he's almost six.

"What was holding me up was to think about my boy and about my wife, and he knew that. So what happened was he came to me and he said, 'Your wife and your son were killed and are dead, and when you go out, you don't have your wife and you don't have your boy'.

"And he told me day after day, and I just did not believe him. I said to myself, now you have to survive, don't listen to nobody. If something happened, you'll know after you go out, if you go out and survive."

Asked by Will what his message is to the people of the UK who will be coming to visit the exhibition, Mr Bohbot urged Britons to "come and see the exhibition with their own eyes".

He concluded: "My message is really clear, guys, if you can come to this place to see with your eyes what happened on the screen and feel the clothes and feel the shoes, it is very different.

"Please come for one minute, you will feel something different about Israel or about October 7 attack or about the situation between Gaza and Israel. Please, please come here for one minute, that's what I want."