NEW YORK — A 23-year-old Israeli man, held captive for over 500 days following the lethal terror assault by Hamas in 2023, is sharing his story of captivity and survival.
Since his launch, Omer Shem-Tov has thrown out the primary pitch at Fenway Park in Boston and has met President Donald Trump. However in his newfound freedom, it would not take a lot to ship Shem-Tov again to hell.
“Every little thing feels so surreal,” he stated. “I discover myself sitting on the seashore in entrance of the solar, feeling the solar on my pores and skin, and immediately I am going again in time and I am considering, ‘Thank God that I am residence once more.'”
It has been practically three months because the 23-year-old was launched, after 505 days of Hamas captivity.
Lastly, he was reunited along with his household after practically a yr and a half. A lot of his time in captivity was spent in isolation in a tiny, pitch-black terror tunnel beneath the Gaza Strip.
“Hunger, it is an terrible factor,” Shem-Tov stated. “Seeing my bones, my shoulder bones, my rib cage, I can really feel it. Consuming a biscuit a day, calculating learn how to eat it all through the day. Not lots of people can think about what true darkness is. If you happen to’re in a darkish room you progress your hand, you see shadows transferring. I didn’t see these shadows. There have been instances I believed I went blind.”
Early within the morning on October 7, as he danced along with his pals within the desert, Hamas massacred a whole bunch on the Nova Music Pageant, and kidnapped 44 folks, together with Shem-Tov.
His mother and father, Malki and Shelley, have been among the many founders of the Hostage and Households Discussion board, now a world advocacy group supported by New York-based UJA Federation. That is the place the household informed their story Tuesday evening.
All of this comes as yet one more try at peace fell by. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doubled down on Wednesday, vowing to keep up the Israeli onslaught till all of Gaza is beneath Israeli management. However Hamas holds 58 hostages and will not return them except the conflict ends.
“That is one thing that we can’t perceive,” stated Omer’s father Matt Malki Shem-Tov. “How come lives of individuals change into political?”
Omer Shem-Tov was the final of 33 hostages launched in the course of the short-lived ceasefire earlier this yr.
He is hungry no extra, and now not in the dead of night, however what he cannot shake is the guilt that he is free and others are usually not.
“It is this sense of guilt, this sense of guilt it won’t allow you to go,” he stated. “All I would like is for folks to essentially unite and are available collectively and to assist us end this hell and retrieve all of the hostages again residence.”
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