‘They would call me a Jewish dog, a Jewish pig and spit on me’

Around 100 days into his captivity in Gaza, there was a moment when Omer Shem Tov came very close to attempting to escape.

He could hear Israeli tanks above the tunnel where he had been kept for more than 50 days and his terrorist captors, were becoming even crueller – as was their wont when the IDF was in close proximity.

“They were treating me very, very badly, I was scared for my life and I started to think really deeply about escaping,” he recalls. “I sat up on my mattress and waited to see if anyone said or did anything. No one did. Then I stood up and still no one responded. There were about nine terrorists and they all appeared to be asleep.

‘So, I picked up the Kalashnikov that was next to one of them. My heart was pounding so fast and I didn’t know what to do. I knew that I would have to kill them all but I was scared that the weapon would jam and I couldn’t fire it, and they would kill me. So I put it down where I had found it and went back to my mattress. I was sweating so much it was hard to calm myself down.”

Sweet Omer, who was taken hostage when he was 20 and who spent 505 days in captivity, forced to cope with severe asthma, will possibly be best remembered as the hostage who kissed a Hamas terrorist during his exit “parade”. Now a film about his captivity, Home: Omer Shem Tov Speaks, has been made by Yoram Zak. On June 26, there will be a special JNF screening, sponsored by Mizrahi Tefahot Bank, featuring both Omer and Yoram, with profits going to help the Nova festival survivors.

Omer Shem Tov[Missing Credit]

Omer was at the Nova festival when he was taken hostage by Hamas alongside his friend Maya Regev and her little brother Itay. For the first 50 days the three were kept together in a flat but after his friends were released during the first ceasefire deal, he found himself alone and more scared than ever.

Most of his time was spent underground. At first, he was kept in a tiny tunnel and given just half a pitta bread or a single biscuit to eat daily. “They would curse me calling me a Jewish pig and dog and spit on me.” 

A couple of months later, after the army left the area, he was moved again and left with three terrorists. Two of them grew to like him, it appears, as Omer made himself helpful, cleaning and even doing the cooking. But the youngest terrorist hated him and the fact that he had made a connection of sorts with the other two.

“For the next 400 days he was cruel for the sake of being cruel,” he says. “He wouldn’t let me sit down for second. He would demand that I bring him food or water. He would curse and spit at me, call me an animal. And they all made me carry their bombs.”

Most of his time was spent in the kitchen, which gave him access to food, and sometimes he even ate with his captors. “There were times when I was so depressed and exhausted, I could barely move, but I had to.”

Initially, he was hopeful that the army would rescue him but as time went on, it became increasingly clear that this was unlikely to happen.

“I always knew that if they had the chance, the IDF would come and rescue me. They are heroes, who are doing an amazing job,” says Omer, who had recently finished his own military service and was working as a waiter when he was taken.

“One of the terrorists told me that as soon as the army came they would shoot me. And then he repeated his words in Arabic so the other could hear. It was very, very hard to hear.”

For the movie, Yoram filmed Omer with the backdrop of a green screen to make it look as if he is in each of the different tunnel areas where he was held captive. It works well but it remains impossible to imagine what life must have been like, trapped underground for all that time.

For his part, Omer would spend some time talking to and even debating with his captors. “They would say, ‘It’s not about the Jews, it’s about the land’ but I saw that whenever there was a terror attack, they were happy. If a Jew was killed, they were happy. When the fires spread across LA they were so pleased. It felt to me that they just want to kill us.”

Reunited with his mother Shelly[Missing Credit]Omer's sister Dana catching sight of him for the first time since his release[Missing Credit]

Occasionally Omer got to see some television and was able to glean something of rallies in Tel Aviv’s Hostage Square. At first, he did not recognise his own parents; they looked so much older than when he had last seen them. So much sadder. The film, which follows Omer’s family as he is released, shows their utter disbelief and then indescribable relief when they see him and then get to hold him.

As for the Hamas kiss, Omer says his captors had asked him to practise kissing one of their hands and that he had refused. “So, then we agreed I would give one of them a hug. But then we got to the ceremony and the cameraman came up to me and said ‘kiss his head’ and you see in the footage that I hesitate. Then he said ‘kiss my head right now’ and I thought to myself, I want to leave hell and if this is what I have to do, then I shall. I don’t want to make a kiss into a big deal.”

But he admits that he was worried about how his fellow countrymen might react to the kiss. He need not have. “People actually come up to me and say, ‘you are a king for the way you kissed that terrorist’ and ‘you showed them’. I felt relieved.”

Now safely in his parents’ home in Herzliya, he has become something of a celebrity, a young man who can barely step out of his front door without people coming up to him and asking for a hug. “Before I became a hostage my life could not have been more normal,” he says. “Then I endured 505 days of total isolation from the world and how I am receiving all this love and affection and attention. It can feel a bit overwhelming.

“I might be rushing to go somewhere and someone will stop me and say, ‘it’s you!’ and they want to chat and it’s hard to say, I have to go. The other evening, I went to a bar and drunk people kept coming up, touching me, whispering in my ear, and that was hard. But I have learnt to receive it all with love because I know that when people want to talk to me it’s about expressing love.”

When he was kidnapped, his mother deliberately did not tidy his messy bedroom and then when he returned to Israel, there was no time to make the unmade bed and put away the discarded clothes for almost as soon as he was released, he was flown to Washington DC to meet President Trump, an encounter he describes simply as “an experience, I think we affected him”. While he was meeting the world’s most powerful man, his sister tidied his bedroom.

Yoram Zak[Missing Credit]

As he talks, you could be forgiven for quietly thinking he looks unaffected by his horrific experience, but this is, of course, an illusion. It is also true that his captivity does not truly end until all the other hostages, all 56 of them, are back home in Israel.

“There’s a healing process that needs to happen but right now I don’t really have time for it,” he says. “When I hear jets overhead or loud noises, I freeze.”

But the worst moment thus far since his release was when he was in New York. “I was sitting in a restaurant and saw that one of the waitresses was wearing a Palestine badge. My heart started pounding, I saw black and I began freaking out. I didn’t know what to do. I felt in the grip of a panic attack. It was crazy that this was the thing that most triggered me.”

And Israel has changed with him, he says. “Before October 7 Tel Aviv was everyone’s happy place. There were parties all the time. Now its streets are so sad,” he says. “You see the pictures of the hostages and the soldiers who have been murdered. You see people checking exits points when they are in a new venue. We are all in survivor mode.”

The hostages have become a political football in Israel with many of the families insisting that a deal is made at any cost. Omer doesn’t want to get political; he says he just knows that his government has to do what it has to do.

“Ever since I was kid, all I’ve ever been taught about is peace. We don’t want a war. We don’t want to kill. But at the moment we have to protect ourselves. They took our brothers and sisters. What did the world expect us to do?”

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To book a ticket for the JNF screening of screening of Home: Omer Sher Tov Speaks go to:​ jnf.co.uk/event/an-unmissable-evening-with-hostage-survivor-omer-shem-tov