I spent 500 days as a hostage of Hamas

On the afternoon of October 6th 2023, Shelly Shem Tov went to Jerusalem to celebrate her birthday with her husband Malki and their three children. Omer (pictured above), the youngest at 21, had finished his compulsory military service a few months before and was working as a waiter in a smart restaurant in Tel Aviv in order to save money to go travelling. “We ate, we laughed, we drank wine,” Shelly remembered. “On the way back I was very grateful. I looked up at the sky and I thanked God for all that I had.”

The family returned to their comfortable house in Hertzliya, a prosperous city just north of Tel Aviv. Omer went to pick up his friend Maya Regev and her brother Itay from their home. The siblings were just back from a trip to Mexico, and Omer had convinced them to go to a music festival. He had been at a trance party once before and fallen in love with the scene. “The freedom,” he told me, “the love in the air, the bond between people. You feel you are in a bubble of love, you forget about everything for a few hours.” He sighed in the retelling, laconic and rueful at the absurd horror of all that had followed. “Yeah, so we went to a party.”

Omer looks different now, after spending 505 days in captivity in Gaza. His brown hair is cropped shorter than the floppy waves that fell across his forehead back in 2023 – an image familiar to Israelis from posters demanding the return of the hostages who had been kidnapped by Hamas during the October 7th attacks.

I met Omer at his family home in early June, a few months after his release from Gaza on February 22nd. He seemed tired and there was a ponderousness to his movements. He said he feels survivor’s guilt. There are believed to be around 20 hostages still alive in Gaza. “It is haunting, the fact that we are sitting here right now, that I have the right to sit here and they don’t. It’s absurd and it’s crazy. I feel it in every bite I take, every shower I take, every time I go to the beach, seeing the sun and the sea. This used to be my dream!”

At dawn on October 7th Hamas punched holes with bulldozers in the fence around Gaza. Its fighters rushed into Israel. They attacked kibbutzim and the Nova music festival, just as the crowd was beginning to head home.

“I remember every second,” Omer told me. “Nothing leaves my head.” He was driving Maya and Itay when they realised that Hamas terrorists were shooting at people. They abandoned the car and ran for around an hour. Ori Danino, a friend Omer had made that night, called and said he would pick them up – he knew a way out.

“Every bite I take, every shower I take, every time I go to the beach, seeing the sun and the sea. This used to be my dream!”

They managed to meet up with Danino, and drove past abandoned cars and dead bodies. “There was a guy with his whole body hanging out of a vehicle,” Omer told me. “His whole stomach was open.” Danino, an army officer, was on the phone to a soldier in his unit, shouting, “Get your stuff together! We are going to war.” Then Hamas fighters opened fire, forcing him to stop the car. Omer, sitting in the front seat, instinctively crouched down in the well. He saw Danino cramming his military ID into the seat to hide it before he kicked open the door and fled. He heard Maya on the phone to her father, screaming that she had been shot.

Omer and his family were not particularly observant but in 2019, Omer’s grandmother had given him a red string to tie around his wrist – a popular Kabbalistic charm that is worn even by secular Israeli Jews. Ordinarily, those strings break after a month or two; this one had lasted years. It had snapped only the day before, so Omer had tied it onto the zip of his bag. Now, as the bullets whizzed by, he held it and prayed.

Hamas terrorists pulled him out of the car, zip-tied his hands and threw him, Itay and Maya, both of whom were wounded in the leg, into the back of a pick-up. (Danino was captured separately and killed by Hamas with five other hostages in August 2024.) The drive into Gaza “took five minutes, we were so close”. He could hear crowds on the streets: “The cheering, the happiness. It was like their 4th of July.”

During the flight from the festival, Omer had called his family several times and gave them intermittent updates. Now when they tried to reach him, his phone was dead. His parents watched with disbelief as the tracker dot moved into Gaza. That evening, a video was posted online showing Omer in the back of the pick-up next to his friends. At least they knew he was alive.

None of the Shem Tovs slept that night. Friends and family came to the house to show support; everyone was transfixed by the news. Shelly went upstairs to Omer’s room. There she asked God for help. Omer’s clothes were in a heap on the floor, his bed unmade. Shelly said to herself, “I won’t clean up this mess. Omer will come back and clean it up himself.” She put masking tape over the light switch and wrote on it, “Don’t turn off the light!”

Omer’s first instinct was to form a rapport with his captors. One of them asked him if he liked Eden Ben Zaken, an Israeli singer. Omer nodded and was asked to sing a few verses of her hit, “Queen of Roses”. He didn’t know all the words, so the Hamas fighter had to prompt him.

The terrorists took away his socks, shoes and Brazil football shirt with Ronaldo’s name on the back – he later found out that one of the Hamas kidnappers had given it to his son. They put him in a room with peeling orange walls. Some time later, the door opened and three children peered in, staring at him curiously. “Look at the Jew!” said their father, one of the Hamas fighters.

Itay and Maya were initially taken to a hospital, where a doctor removed a bullet from Itay’s leg without anaesthetic. Maya’s left foot, which was barely attached, was bandaged up. After they were brought back from the hospital, Itay joined Omer; Maya was held in another room in the same apartment. When Itay lay down on a mattress, Omer could see blood seeping through his bandages. He sifted through a pile of junk in the corner of the room and found two puppy pee pads to help staunch the flow. A few days later, Maya was taken back to hospital for an operation on her leg; she was held in the ward for the next two months. Meanwhile, Omer and Itay were moved between several apartments. Their captors told them not to speak – if the neighbours heard them, they would be killed – so they talked in whispers.

Some time later, the door opened and three children peered in, staring at him curiously. “Look at the Jew!” said their father, one of the Hamas fighters

Omer tried to engage their guard when he escorted him to the bathroom, asking him the Arabic for certain things. He was “a terrorist but he was OK”, Omer said. He let the pair shower and changed Itay’s dressings – but he did so roughly, digging his fingers into the wounds.

Israeli planes were bombarding the area. One night Omer woke up to a low soft whistle followed by the thud of an unexploded bomb. He and Itay held hands until they fell asleep. On another occasion, Omer – who told me he was a “bit ADHD” – had spent a day cleaning the room as a way of keeping himself occupied. The moment he finished, a huge explosion shook the building and dust settled on the surfaces he had just wiped.

The outside world was tantalisingly close. Sometimes they could hear the television in the living room. Once they heard Binyamin Netanyahu give a speech, in which he said the main goal of the war in Gaza was to eliminate Hamas. Omer didn’t hear him say anything about the hostages.

He and Itay grew as close as brothers. Sometimes they would make dark jokes and laugh into their pillows to stifle the noise. But Itay became despondent. One night, Omer prayed to God to give Itay strength. The next morning Itay woke up and declared, “I really believe we are going to go home!”

Hamas guards brought notes from Maya in hospital which were filled with news and encouragement. Extraordinarily, she also managed to send a bottle of grape juice, as she knew it was Itay’s favourite. Itay drank half of it straight away, before Omer stopped him. He wanted to preserve it so they could use it for kiddush, the prayer over wine or grape juice that sanctifies the Sabbath. Each week they drank a sip and covered their head with tissues since they did not have kippahs. That small bottle of grape juice lasted for most of Omer’s captivity.

After 50 days of bombardment a ceasefire was announced in November 2023. Maya and Itay were released in an exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel. Omer, older and male, was not on the priority list for release. Now he was on his own. He remembers standing in front of the curtained window of his room, which let in just a narrow beam of light. He opened his mouth to scream, but no noise came out.

Omer spent three days alone before Hamas fighters came to take him away. “Am I going home?” he asked. One of them shook his head and pointed towards the floor.

They led him underground and locked him in a tunnel cell. It was so low he couldn’t stand up, so narrow he couldn’t stretch out his arms, and so deep that “there was no noise of bombing. Nothing.” And it was pitch black. Omer could not see his hand in front of his face. In the first days there he suffered a serious asthma attack; his captors brought him an inhaler.

Omer was held in the tunnel cell for 50 days. Day and night became the same. He was given a bottle to piss into; every few days he was taken to use a filthy toilet. He couldn’t shower so scraped the grime off his skin with his fingernails. When one of the guards dropped a small torch, Omer hid it, turning it on occasionally to check if he could still see. Omer has coeliac disease, but couldn’t get his guards to understand the implications of this. He ate the bread they gave him, despite the stomach pains it caused. His rations shrunk: at first two pitas a day, then one, then half, then date biscuits which he divided into bites to last longer.

After almost two months, he was close to despair. For five days straight he had been alone. He could feel his ribs and was so weak he could barely stand

Before he slept he would talk to God. “How are you, Hashem?” he would begin. “How was your day?” Then he would thank him for his food, though it was meagre, for the air in his lungs, though it was fetid. He would ask for guidance and for his family to be given strength.

His faith grew more intense. “I saw so many miracles. That I was alive when I could have been killed.” He counted his blessings and tried to count the days, even though he woke to interminable darkness and never knew when morning was.

After almost two months, he was close to despair. For five days straight he had been alone. He could feel his ribs and was so weak he could barely stand. He cried to God to take him out of that place. Another miracle: after a few minutes, a Hamas fighter told him he was being moved.

Omer felt a burst of energy as he followed the Hamas fighter through the tunnels. In some places the ceiling was smashed from air strikes and they had to crawl. The tunnel sloped upwards. Raw concrete walls gave way to ones painted in white so bright it made his eyes hurt.

They arrived in a spacious room, off which were two bathrooms and a kitchen. It was the base of a Hamas unit of around ten fighters, but it seemed like paradise. The fighters let him take a shower and gave him some food, which he ate hungrily as they jeered and called him a pig. Their plan had been to question him then take him back to his cell. But that night an airstrike destroyed part of the tunnel network, preventing his return. Again, a miracle.

He slept beside his Hamas captors. They reasoned that if there was a rescue attempt the Israelis would not be able to distinguish the hostage from them – and he would be shot in the confusion. They told him that three hostages had been killed by IDF forces as they tried to escape. Omer was not sure whether to believe them. (He later discovered it was true.) The Hamas fighters reminded him that, if Israeli soldiers were to burst in, they would shoot him before he could be freed in any case.

For the first month the IDF conducted operations in the area where he was being held. The room was only around 12 metres underground, and he could feel the vibrations of explosions and the rumble of tanks. One night he heard voices speaking Hebrew through a ventilation shaft. Another night he lay awake as the Hamas fighters slept. He got to his feet and went over to a Kalashnikov that had been leant against the wall. No one stirred. He put his hands around the stock and lifted it off the ground. There were nine Hamas fighters in the room. Omer would have to kill them all in order to escape. But he knew how unreliable the guns were. He softly lowered it back down to the floor and returned to bed.

The Hamas unit had planted explosives in the building above the room and rigged up a surveillance system using the rear-view mirror cameras from cars. They told Omer that he must press the detonator if they saw Israeli soldiers enter it. “I told them no,” Omer recounted. They said they would shoot him if he didn’t. “OK, so shoot me,” he replied. “At some point you accept death. I was afraid, not of death, not of Hamas killing me, but of the IDF killing me…I didn’t want to be killed by my brother or my sister.”

After the IDF withdrew from the area, the Hamas fighters ventured above ground and found books and magazines the Israelis had left behind. Omer described them to his captors: a book of Psalms, Stieg Larsson’s novel, “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest” and various military magazines. He asked if he could keep them to read. In return, he told the fighters, he would clean and cook and do any chores they needed. He smiled convincingly and said they might as well get on. The Hamas fighters agreed.

So Omer became a kind of factotum. He cleaned the toilets and washed the floors. He made bread and cooked – mostly pasta, beans, chickpeas and tinned tuna. Once a week, he fried corned beef with onion and green peppers. Sometimes in the kitchen, he would sing very quietly to himself, either Hebrew songs or Elton John’s “I’m Still Standing”, which he liked to imagine as the soundtrack to his homecoming. When the Hamas fighters caught him singing, they yelled at him to stop.

“At some point you accept death. I was afraid, not of death, not of Hamas killing me, but of the IDF killing me…I didn’t want to be killed by my brother or my sister”

The electricity was intermittent. Wires snaked between battery banks, solar panels and generators. Omer did electrical repairs when the power went down. He once spent two weeks unblocking a collapsed tunnel with a crowbar. When a Hamas fighter arrived with bin bags full of hundreds of thousands of shekels, it was his job to count the notes and put them in envelopes for salaries.

The commander of the Hamas unit spoke fluent Hebrew. Omer suspected he was an intelligence officer: “He spoke so well you would think he was an Israeli.” From time to time Omer helped him with vocabulary. “I gained his trust,” he told me. “We had a nice connection. We spoke about almost anything. I didn’t present myself as a victim, depressed.” The intelligence officer’s wife and children had been killed in a bomb attack. “I told him I was sorry for his loss.” As Omer told me about him, he uncomfortably juggled his empathy for his enemy. “It’s hard to hear [difficult things] about families. But I remember what they did to us on October 7th and it’s unforgivable.”

The Hamas fighters managed to rig up a TV. Omer watched hostage demonstrations in Tel Aviv on the news, hoping to catch a glimpse of his family or his own face on a poster – but he never did. Al Jazeera, the channel favoured by the Hamas fighters, tended to broadcast explicitly anti-government demonstrations; Omer’s parents went to a non-partisan one. His captors taunted him, saying his parents and his government had forsaken him and the other hostages. For a while he was plagued by dreams of returning home and shouting at his parents: “Where were you? Why didn’t you fight for me?”

Omer tried to record dates in a notebook to keep track of time. He left the notebook behind when he was released, but later the IDF found it and returned it to him. He had written “hamburger” and “Mum” and “Dad” and pages of one word over and over again: “Hungry”.

In fact, Omer’s parents were founding members of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a campaign group. Thousands rallied to volunteer. They organised vigils and demonstrations, and spoke to lawmakers and the press. “We were naive,” Malki Shem Tov told me. “No one thought it would take so long.”

From time to time Israeli intelligence gave them updates. They knew Omer was still alive and that he was being held alone. Sometimes they would console themselves with the knowledge of Omer’s strength and good humour. They used to say, half-jokingly, “Omer is so sociable, he’s probably sitting playing backgammon with his captors right now.”

Shelly, who had always described herself as secular, became more observant. She began to keep kosher and to pray, and befriended an ultra-Orthodox woman who had been moved by her family’s plight. Every morning she went to Omer’s room, still untouched, to talk to him from afar. She sang him the children’s song she used to wake him up with, and told him to be strong, to have faith. She imagined she was stroking his head as she always had, and the intensity of her longing made her feel his hair beneath her hands as if he were there.

Omer recalled his family memories no less vividly. He imagined riding with his father on his motorcycle, watching films with his brother and sister, taking his dog, Lucas, for walks. Once he drew a beach scene on a wall, with the sun shining down on the sea, and himself under a coconut palm, but one of the Hamas fighters soon rubbed it off. He also imagined resting his head on his mother’s knees as she stroked his hair, which he had always loved.

After some months, one of the Hamas fighters showed him footage of an event his parents had organised on his birthday. Hundreds of people gathered wearing T-shirts with his face on and released yellow balloons into the sky. His parents’ faces were drawn, but at least he knew now how hard they were fighting for him. The Hamas fighter said they looked old. “No,” Omer told him, “they look sad.”

Omer spent over a year with the same Hamas fighters in the big room in the tunnel. He got to know them intimately: the names of their wives and their children, their habits and personalities. “They say they want to die, to be shaheed [martyrs],” he told me, “but they are humans like us. They are scared, I saw times when they…were breaking apart.” Their behaviour towards him was capricious. Sometimes they would be friendly, but then they would show him videos of the attacks on October 7th and say things like, “We’ll do it again,” or, “Killing Jews is a blessing from God.” Omer told me that “if they were stuck in the tunnel for a week or more, they would go crazy, become depressed, sit on the floor and stare at the ceiling.”

He also imagined resting his head on his mother’s knees as she stroked his hair, which he had always loved

Omer did not speak Arabic before he was kidnapped. Now he listened carefully and began to learn. Over time he understood almost everything his captors said, but he never let on. Mostly he communicated in Hebrew with the commander or in halting Arabic. One of the fighters “was a little nicer”. He spoke English and loved the popstar Billie Eilish. They talked a lot about their lives and families and hobbies. But often the discussion would end with the man bragging about October 7th, or cursing Omer’s mother and shouting that Omer was ungrateful.

The fighters often coerced Omer into performing chores. “Do this or…” The threat would be held dangling. Once one of them showed him a photograph of a hostage being hung upside down. “They cursed me, spat on me. I was kind of a slave to them.”

Omer continued to recite kiddush every Sabbath. The Hamas fighters mocked the manner of Jewish prayer, bobbing their heads up and down. He watched them pray five times a day and learned the opening of the Koran and the start of their prayers. “We believe in the same God,” Omer acknowledged. The fighters sometimes mused about converting him to Islam, but they knew that a conversion wouldn’t be valid if coerced.

His guards would try to convince Omer of the justice of the Palestinian cause and present themselves as a resistance army. Omer told me he had come to believe that, were he in their position, he too would have fought to defend his home. “I really did try to understand and to learn more about this conflict,” he said. He listened to their explanations of Islam and the Koran. But then he would ask them: isn’t taking hostages haram (religiously forbidden)? They would reply they were doing it for religious reasons, so it was halal (permitted).

“I played along, nodding at their assertions. “I was a hypocrite,” Omer told me. “It was my way to survive. I was always nice to them. I would say, ‘We’re friends,’ and they would say, ‘Sure, as soon as you leave you will tell Israeli intelligence everything.’ And I would say, ‘No, we’re friends’ and then they would relax again.” But every time a senior commander visited, he kept his ears open. When Omer was finally released and debriefed, Israeli intelligence told him he had brought them “gold”.

The Hamas fighters watched the election in America with interest. When Donald Trump won, “things changed completely”. Suddenly Trump was talking about a hostage deal. “They started treating me better.” Omer could tell the Hamas fighters wanted the war to end. Finally a ceasefire came into effect on January 19th 2025.

Omer had heard rumblings of a hostage deal many times. Once when a deal collapsed, he had despaired. “This is my life,” he thought, “I’m not getting out of here.” His body shook and his breath became laboured. He realised he was drooling; his hands felt numb; his legs were immobile. Panic rose within him. Then he heard his own voice calming himself down: “It’s OK. Right now, you have food, you have water. Everything’s OK.”

In the wake of the ceasefire, food flowed into Gaza. Omer now ate three meals a day: bread, hummus, chicken, rice, vegetables, even chocolate. Before he was often given only small amounts, less than the fighters got. Now he began to put on weight.

Omer saw on TV reports that his name was on a list of hostages to be released. But his captors told him that this wasn’t true, that nothing had been decided. Still, he began to hope. After several releases had gone ahead, the fighters admitted it was his turn next. Before he left, they asked him how the complicated electrical rig should be maintained and how the kitchen appliances worked.

Then the day of his release came. After 450 days underground he walked out of the tunnels. “There was cold fresh air. Heaven.” He smiled to recount it. This was his favourite part of the story, the only bit he really liked telling.

He wanted Omer to kiss him goodbye for the cameras. Omer hesitated but thought, “If this is what I have to do to get home, I’ll do it”

Initially he was grouped with three other hostages. It was the first time since Itay was released that he had seen another Israeli. They were blindfolded for several hours, and the blindfolds were only removed when they were taken to a tunnel in the middle of the night. One of the other hostages looked healthy, but Omer was shocked by the gaunt faces of the other two. He gave his sandwich to them. The four hostages stayed up that night, whispering to each other. Omer had seen the hostage handovers to the Red Cross on TV and was able to warn them that the crowds would be cheering and jostling.

The next day they were given olive uniforms and blindfolded again. Pausing at the entrance of the tunnel, one of the Israelis began to recite quietly “Shir HaMaalot”, a Psalm about the return from exile in Babylon: “When the Lord brought back the captives of Zion, we were like dreamers.” Soon all of them were singing together “loud and proud”, as he later described it to an interviewer.

They were put into a vehicle and driven around Gaza for hours. Omer hadn’t got any rest the night before. Now, wrung out by swinging between hope and hopelessness, he fell asleep. He woke up to cries of “Allahu Akhbar!”

In the footage of his release, Omer can’t help waving and grinning as he stands on the stage, flanked by ranks of Hamas fighters, their faces masked with black balaclavas. He told me the crowd of Palestinians was chanting his name, “Omer, Omer. Omer!” At one point, Omer leans over and kisses one of the terrorists on the head. He explained to me this was one of the fighters who had guarded him: he wanted Omer to kiss him goodbye for the cameras. Omer hesitated but thought, “If this is what I have to do to get home, I’ll do it.”

A van drew up to the edge of the stage and the doors opened to reveal two men peering out. They were terribly thin and held their heads in their hands, their faces wet with tears. Their captors had brought them to watch the handover – but they wouldn’t be going home. They are still being held in Gaza.

The Red Cross convoy drove the short distance towards the IDF-controlled zone and the perimeter fence. Omer saw heads popping out of the hatches of Israeli tanks and people waving. He looked up in shock at the sky and at the Israeli soldiers around him. An IDF hostage liaison officer introduced herself. Omer asked if he could hug her, and she kindly held him.

At the nearby IDF base, he took a shower and changed into new clothes. It was here that Omer was reunited with his parents. The first thing he said was, “Are you OK?” and his mother said, “Are we OK? Are you OK?” “It was pure happiness,” he told an interviewer later. “I never felt this much joy in my life.”

A short while later, Omer and his parents were taken by helicopter to a hospital. A soldier gave him a whiteboard and told him to write a message for the TV cameras. Omer drew a smiley face to match the tattoo on his neck, and added “PS I want a burger.” At the hospital, where his brother and sister were waiting to see him, he was greeted with hundreds of burgers sent by well-wishers from all over Israel.

That night, the whole family stayed up until 4am, “talking and talking and talking”. They had a suite but they pushed all the beds into one room so they could sleep together. Shelly pulled a sofa close to Omer’s bed and held his hand. She didn’t let go all night. “It was like Omer was reborn and I was sitting beside my newborn watching how he breathed, if he was sleeping. Whenever he woke up, I told him, ‘It’s OK, It’s OK’.”

After a week Omer went home. Physically, he was in reasonable shape. In footage of the celebration for his return, Omer is wearing a new Ronaldo shirt, dancing and smiling. His mother took him up to his room, still untidied since his kidnapping. In a video of the moment, Omer says, “Let’s turn off the light.”

Omer was in the last group of hostages to be released before the ceasefire broke down in early March. On October 7th 251 hostages were taken to Gaza; 146 have come home. The bodies of 56 of those taken have been repatriated. Of the 49 who remain in Gaza, it is believed around 20 are still alive. Omer, like other released hostages, has talked to the press, to Jewish groups and to politicians – to raise awareness and advocate for the release of the remaining captives.

“It was like Omer was reborn and I was sitting beside my newborn watching how he breathed, if he was sleeping. Whenever he woke up, I told him, ‘It’s OK, It’s OK’ ”

The week after his return, Omer flew to Washington, DC. Along with other former hostages, he met Trump in the Oval Office. He was impressed that Trump listened as each of the hostages told their story. Omer told me he could tell that the president was moved. At one point Trump asked, “Why is no one filming this? It’s a historical moment. Everyone has to see this.”

Omer’s psychological recovery has been up and down. “At first,” he said, “it was an overwhelming high, but after a month and a half came ‘the down’, the depression. I got it somehow lightly, for about four days. I felt very tired, I didn’t want to do anything.”

He spends his time with a close circle of friends, many of whom are also survivors of the Nova festival attack. He sees Maya and Itay almost every day. His father told me they were planning on going to another festival in August. “Not in Israel! I told him no more festivals.” Malki gave a father’s shrug, as if to say, “What can you do?”

His parents say their son is more serious now – more mature, more grateful and more religious. He prays every day and tries to keep kosher. “I became stronger and a lot more focused. I feel I can do anything I want,” Omer told me. “Everything is easy, a piece of cake for me.” He showed me the two tattoos he has got since his release: one says “chai”, the Hebrew for life; the other is a thin red line around his wrist, to replace his grandmother’s thread. ■

Wendell Steavenson won the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 2024 for her reporting for 1843 from Ukraine and Israel

Photographs: NADAV NEUHAUS

Research images: Getty