Omer Shem Tov, who was released from Hamas
..a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",...captivity in March as part of the Gazoo
...Hellhole adjunct to Israel and Egypt's Sinai Peninsula, inhabited by Gazooks. The place was acquired in the wake of the 1967 War and then presented to Paleostinian control in 2006 by Ariel Sharon, who had entered his dotage. It is currently ruled with a rusty iron fist by Hamas with about the living conditions you'd expect. It periodically attacks the Hated Zionist Entity whenever Iran needs a ruckus created or the hard boyz get bored, getting thumped by the IDF in return. The ruling turbans then wave the bloody shirt and holler loudly about
oppressionand
disproportionate response...
ceasefire-hostage deal, has said his captors cursed, starved and spat on him, and once threatened to shoot him if he would not agree to help collapse a booby-trapped building on IDF troops.
"If you don’t do it we’ll shoot you in the head," Shem Tov recalled his captors saying. "I told them: Then shoot me in the head. I have no intention of doing it."
Shem Tov said he managed to stay on his captors’ good side by amusing them and performing menial tasks. One night in captivity, however, when the IDF was operating nearby, he decided to carry out a plan to kill his captors and escape. "There was no other way," he said.
When all his captors were asleep, Shem Tov said, he quietly took hold of one of their weapons. But then he let go of the weapon and went back to his cell. He told Channel 12 in an interview broadcast this week that he believed the reason he got cold feet was fear the gun would jam.
Shem Tov was snatched from the Reim-area Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led snuffies stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. He was kidnapped along with his friends, siblings Maya and Itay Regev, who were released in the November 2023 weeklong truce-hostage deal.
Murdered hostage Ori Danino, whom the three had met the night before, managed to flee but came back with a car to save them.
"I opened the door and shoved Maya and Itay inside," said Shem Tov. "Ori kept on saying, ’keep your head down, keep your head down’... He really looked out for us."
They drove away but soon ran into snuffies who were blocking the road with two pickup trucks. The snuffies opened fire, according to Shem Tov. He recalled one coming up to him, grabbing him by the shirt and tossing him to the ground before beginning to beat him. He could also see snuffies remove Itay and Maya from the car, both with bullet wounds in their legs. Maya’s leg was "just dangling in the air," said Shem Tov.
He and the two siblings were loaded onto a pickup truck and driven to a small storage unit in Gaza, Shem Tov said, recalling the shouts of "Allahu Akbar" he could hear from outside. In the storage unit, Shem Tov was ordered to climb down into a hole in the ground. Once underground, he was met by an armed terrorist and was made to lie on the floor.
Shem Tov said his first instinct was to make nice with the terrorist. "I ask him, ’What’s your name?’ And he tells me his name, and then I tell him my name," recalled Shem Tov, adding that the terrorist had not asked.
"I say to him, ’I’m Omer,’ and then he says to me, ’Do you know Eden Ben-Zaken?'" Shem Tov said, referring to the Israeli pop singer.
"I told him I do, and he says: ’Sing me a song.’ So I sing Queen of Roses," Shem Tov chuckled, referring to Ben Zaken’s 2015 hit. "Just the chorus... he even continued after me."
From there, Shem Tov was taken to his first cell. He said the first thing he thought of there was Gilad Shalit, an IDF soldier whom Hamas kidnapped in 2006 and released five years later in exchange for over 1,000 Paleostinian terrorists, many of serving life terms for murder — including Hamas chief Yahya Sinwar, who criminal masterminded the October 7 onslaught. Shem Tov said he thought at this point that he, too, would remain in Gaza for five years.
Forty minutes later, snuffies brought in a heavily bloodied Itay Regev, said Shem Tov, adding: "I said, thank God, I have Itay now." After a few minutes, Shem Tov said, the snuffies also brought in Itay’s sister Maya, but removed her two minutes later to an adjacent room.
’WE’LL BE BACK IN A WEEK’
Shem Tov recalled asking the captor who stayed in his room how many Paleostinian prisoners he would be worth in an exchange. The captor said fifty. The answer gave Shem Tov hope, he said.
"I look at Itay and I say to him, ’Oh that’s great, it’s all good,'" said Shem Tov. "’Gilad Shalit was like a thousand, we’ll be back in a week, it’s all good.'"
One night, Shem Tov recalled, he and Itay were awaken by the whistle of a bomb. Moments later there was a massive boom, and the window of their cell shattered, Shem Tov said. He and Itay clutched onto each other’s hand, Shem Tov. "I think we even fell asleep like that," he added.
Three days after the air raid, Shem Tov and Itay were moved to a new apartment. But their new quarters were also rattled by air raids, Shem Tov said, recalling one night when he was sure the building would collapse and kill him. When the building stopped shaking, a terrorist covered in dust came in informed them that ten buildings were felled in the raid, Shem Tov said.
The captor in that apartment had a television in the next room, which played Al Jazeera. Shem Tov said one night, the door of his room was left slightly ajar and he was able to watch a speech by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu about the Gaza war.
The premier’s message, Shem Tov said, was that "the main goal is to destroy Hamas."
"He didn’t say, ’we’ll bring them back home.’ He didn’t say, ’there’s a deal.’ He didn’t say anything like that," said Shem Tov. "When it was over, I went back to Itay, and he said, ’What, what did he say?’ he recounted. "And I told him, ’Everything’s fine, he said they’ll bring us back home.'"
"And then I started thinking about... my parents, my family," said Shem Tov. "The suffering they are going through now."
Shem Tov would remain alone in captivity after the November 2023 ceasefire, which saw Hamas release 105 women and kiddies in exchange for 240 Paleostinians detained in Israel. Itay Regev, who was 18 at the time, was released days after his sister, leaving Shem Tov alone.
"Suddenly, there was silence in the apartment," said Shem Tov. "And then began... the fears, the feeling of loneliness. I felt that I was going insane."
’COULD SEE THE BONES OF MY SHOULDERS AND RIBS’
When the fighting resumed after the first hostage deal, Shem Tov was moved a third time. "We walk underground for something like 50 minutes, and we reach a kind of cell, with bars. They open the cell, put me inside and close it," said Shem Tov. "I immediately had an asthma attack. The moment I got there I wasn’t able to breathe."
One of his captors there was a doctor, Shem Tov said. "I was able to explain to him that I have asthma and won’t be able to be here without an inhaler, and they got me an inhaler."
Shem Tov was held in this tunnel in pitch-black darkness, with a light that could hold for barely a couple hours, "and even that gradually decreased," he said, adding that he would disconnect the lamp to conserve energy so he could eat with light.
Shem Tov’s diet in captivity dwindled from two pitas a day to a biscuit and a small amount of salty water, he said. "I was extremely thin, extremely, I could already see the bones of my shoulders and ribs," he said. Ahead of his release, he said, his captors fattened him up with chocolate, chicken and rice.
He said he passed the time by trying to sleep as much as possible so that he could dream of his family and friends. In his waking hours, he would talk with God.
"Everyone asks him for stuff but nobody asks how he’s doing," said Shem Tov. "So I would always start with, ’Are you okay?’... and then first thing, I would express thanks... for being alive, for breathing, for the food I have." Then, he said, he would make requests: "Put me on the right path, help me get home safely... keep my family safe."
Shem Tov was later taken to a larger cell — "from my perspective, the paradise of the tunnels" — where he would be held for some 400 days until his release. For the first time, he was able to shower.
After so much time without bathing, "You can really peel the filth off of you, from the chest and neck... black as coal," Shem Tov said.
He was allowed to eat with his captors, and recalled his captors taunting him for the way he scarfed down his first meal. "They look at me as I’m eating, and I hear them saying, ’pig, pig, Jew pig,'" said Shem Tov. "And I’m eating, I don’t care."
"One day we’re eating and I say to them, I’ll clear" the dishes, said Shem Tov. From that, he said, there developed "kind of an unspoken agreement that... I do things and you just be nice to me. And I ended spending most of my time in the kitchen there."
He said he soon took over cooking and some basic maintenance tasks in the tunnel — so much so that ahead of his release his captors asked him for tips about the place’s upkeep. He also made his captors laugh: When one asked what he wanted to work as, Shem Tov said he wants to be an actor. The terrorist then asked Shem Tov to imitate him. The imitation delighted the captor.
"The fact that I connected with him saved me," said Shem Tov.
Shem Tov was among the last hostages to be released in the the latest hostage release and ceasefire deal. The agreement’s first phase saw Hamas release 33 women, children, civilian men over 50 and those deemed "humanitarian cases." The first phase expired on March 2, a day after Shem Tov was released, amid Israel’s refusal to negotiate the second part, which would have required the IDF to fully withdraw from Gaza.
Hamas sparked outrage in Israel by holding propaganda ceremonies when handing over the hostages to the Red Thingy. At his ceremony, Shem Tov was forced to kiss the head of the snuffies next to him.
"The cameraman came up to me and told me to kiss him on the head," said Shem Tov. "You can see in the video that I’m hesitant... I said, okay, I’ll kiss him on the head and go home."
He said he did not know why he was on the list of hostages to be released. "There shouldn’t be a list. It should be everyone," said Shem Tov. He added that he did not think military force would get the hostages out.
Asked why there were still captives in Gaza, he said: "I think it’s a political issue."
Terror groups in Gaza are still holding 59 hostages, including the remains of a soldier killed fighting in the 2014 Gaza war. At least 35 captives have been confirmed dead.