Ten months after their emotional engagement, former hostage Eliya Cohen and his partner of the past decade, Ziv Aboud, were married Wednesday evening in front of 1,000 guests at Ronit Farm.
The couple was escorted to the wedding canopy by Israeli star Amir Benayoun, who performed his classic song “Nitzachta Iti Hakol” — “You Won Everything With Me” — taking on especially emotional meaning on this night.
Cohen was abducted to Gaza from the “shelter of death,” while Aboud survived by hiding. In February 2025, after 505 days in Hamas captivity, he was returned to Israel.
In an interview with Laisha magazine in February 2024, Abud recalled how they met: “We both belonged to Israel’s trance music communities and knew each other from the various forums. When I was 19, I responded to one of his stories and then sent him a message on Instagram. I was actually the one who made the first move. Then he invited me to his army beret march ceremony, and I came.”
She also described how, after Cohen was abducted, she discovered that he had been planning to propose to her: “His mother told me he had bought a ring — and told everyone except me. He wanted to surprise me.”
She walked down the aisle to Amir Benayoun singing his classic song 'You Won Everything With Me'
(צילום: אור גפן)
On October 7, the couple arrived at the Nova music festival with Ziv’s nephew, Amit Ben Avida, and his girlfriend, Karin Schwarzman. The four took shelter in a roadside shelter on Route 232, next to the bus stop opposite Kibbutz Re’im.
Amit and Karin were among the 16 people murdered in the shelter, where 27 Nova festivalgoers had fled for safety. Ziv was among seven survivors, while Eliya was abducted alongside Or Levy, Alon Ohel and the late Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
Eliya and Ziv are man and wife
(Photo: Or Gefen Communications)
Ziv described the harrowing experience: “They [the terrorists] started taking people out, including Eliya, and then the shooting began. A lot of people fell on top of me and basically saved me. Only after three hours did I dare to get up, and then I saw Amit and Karin dead. I looked for Eliya and couldn’t find him. I thought they had murdered him, and only later did I see on Telegram the video showing that he had been abducted alive to Gaza.”
After his release, Eliya returned to the shelter and also spoke about the heroism of the late Aner Shapira, who threw back grenades that the terrorists hurled into the shelter: “Out of nowhere, he said, ‘We can’t let them kill us like this.’”