|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Former hostage Omer Shem Tov has revealed chilling new details about his 505-day captivity in Gaza, including a failed attempt by Hamas to use him as bait in a terror trap intended to kill Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldiers.
In an emotional interview aired Thursday evening on Channel 12’s Uvda, Shem Tov recounted his harrowing ordeal, describing starvation, psychological torment, and narrowly avoiding being forced into complicity in an attempted ambush.
Shem Tov, who was abducted by Hamas terrorists during the October 7 massacre at the Nova Music Festival, said his captors once spread what he estimated as three million shekels across the floor and ordered him to blow up a building that concealed a tunnel.
The plan was to lure Israeli soldiers into a trap. When he refused, a terrorist threatened to shoot him. “Shoot me in the head, then,” he defiantly responded.
The 21-year-old was among dozens kidnapped from the festival and taken into Gaza. He spent much of his captivity in darkness, first moved between apartments and later confined to a narrow underground tunnel for 450 days.
For 50 days, he had only one biscuit a day and was given salty, undrinkable water. “I was very, very thin. I could already see the bones,” he told Uvda.
Shem Tov described moments of sheer terror, including the abduction itself. “There was a good party, and then suddenly the music stopped.
You start hearing gunshots and see people falling to the floor too,” he said, recalling the chaos. He credited fellow festivalgoer Ori Danino, who was later killed, for trying to save others. “Ori really, really took care of us,” Shem Tov said.
Danino, 25, escaped the initial onslaught but was captured after returning to help more attendees. He was later found dead in a Hamas tunnel in Rafah alongside five others.
Shem Tov described how Danino urged him and others to stay low before terrorists violently subdued them. “One of them beat me and threw me in front of the car’s wheels. I thought he was going to crush me,” Shem Tov said.
During his time underground, Shem Tov attempted to humanize himself to his captors, even singing for them when ordered. After fellow hostage Itay Regev was released, he spiraled into loneliness and mental exhaustion. “I just felt like I’m going crazy,” he admitted.
At one point, hearing IDF forces operating nearby gave him a fleeting hope of escape, but a captor quickly deterred him by drawing a pistol. “It was fear. To be a deterrent,” Shem Tov explained.
Eventually, Shem Tov learned through Al Jazeera that he would be among 33 hostages released in a ceasefire deal. He described finally breathing fresh air after 450 days underground as “heaven.”
Despite his freedom, Shem Tov expressed deep survivor’s guilt. “Why am I here and they are not?” he asked. “There should not be a list. It should be everyone and that’s it.”
He concluded with a call for another ceasefire agreement, stating, “Only a deal will bring them back. The delay is political.”