Freed hostage Segev Kalfon, who was kidnapped from the Nova festival on October 7, said his Hamas captors told him they intensified their beatings against him and other hostages because of inflammatory comments made by far-right Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, describing a brutal routine of violence and starvation during his two years in captivity.

In a Channel 12 interview aired Saturday, following his release under the October ceasefire deal, Kalfon said, “Whatever Ben Gvir said or did, they’d take it out on us.”

In a separate interview aired Saturday on Ynet, Kalfon recounted that around the 270th day of the war, the hostages’ daily torment worsened dramatically. “The terrorists who came every day to beat us increased the violence,” he said. “Because of Ben Gvir,” they told him.

According to the Channel 12 interview, the worsened conditions began when Kalfon — along with fellow hostages Yosef-Haim Ohana and Maxim Herkin, who had been held together — was moved from a private home to a tunnel. There they joined hostages Bar Kuperstein, Ohad Ben Ami, and Elkana Bohbot.

“That’s where the abuse began — I’d even call it torture,” Segev recalled. “They would beat us with all [their] force, they would put rings on [their fingers] in order to leave marks. There was hemorrhaging on my neck and back.”

He said the captors also deliberately starved them, even before the beatings escalated.

“They starved us,” Kalfon said. “I would see what they ate: a bowl of cheese, a bowl of fava beans, a package of saj — saj is like a thin pita. And they’d eat a lot. We got one saj. The hunger starts eating your body. In the morning, he’d come and bring us a tomato — that was breakfast. He’d cut it into four pieces; he’d eat one slice and divide the other three among us.”

Halfon also described a harrowing incident that aligned with an account given by freed hostage Ben Ami.

“One day, I see a new guy, angry,” Kalfon recalled. “He turns on Al Jazeera and says, ‘You see this? Your army killed three of our........

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