“I live through miracles,” Omer Shemtov says, while soaking in a sunny Bondi morning.
The released hostage recently celebrated turning 23, a particularly poignant milestone after both his 21st and 22nd birthdays were spent in Hamas captivity.
“I’m home. I’m alive. I’m safe. I am with my family. I can breathe. I have food, so everything is all right,” he tells The AJN during his visit to Australia for UIA and The Shabbat Project.
It has been nine months since he was released from the tunnels of Gaza and every day since he has been advocating for the release of the remaining hostages, while also sharing his harrowing story with audiences around the world. One of those audiences included US President Donald Trump, whom he met with at the White House just nine days after his release.
“I was there of course to thank him and to advocate for the remaining hostages. It’s become my life mission and it’s non-stop,” says Shemtov, before adding that it’s not over until every remaining body has been returned.
Faith and miracles
Shemtov says before October 7 he always believed in God, but he feels his relationship with Hashem became stronger while he was in captivity and, because of that, he started noticing miracles everywhere.
“Even in the tunnels,” he says.
“It’s something that helped me so much. Seeing miracles while I was there gave me so much hope and resilience and just the belief that I’m going back home. Faith has been a big part of my journey.”
Shemtov spent 505 days in captivity – 450 of those days he was all alone in the tunnels.
“Every day I would wake up and say Modeh Ani and before I went to sleep I had those five minutes when I used to speak with Hashem,” he says.
“And I would speak to him like he was right there next to me. I’d start by asking him, ‘How are you? How was your day? What do you need from me?’ Then I would say thank you for everything he is doing for me and everything I have, and then I would ask for everything I needed.”
One miracle he described related to a red Kabbalah string his grandmother had given to him.
“Normally those strings last for three months, four months maximum, and it lasted me three-and-a-half years,” he says.
“On the afternoon of October 6 the string ripped – just a few hours before the attack. I remember I took that string and I tied it around my belt bag. On the day of the seventh, while I was inside the car and the terrorists were shooting us, I held the string in my hand and I prayed to God it would save me. Everyone in the car got shot except me.”
After his release, Shemtov got a broken red string tattooed around his wrist.
Recalling October 7
Shemtov says he remembers being at the Nova festival – “it was a festival of love and peace” – before the attack started at 6.29am.
“People in Israel are used to attacks, so we did not panic,” he says.
“We stayed in the parking lot, but after some time we were running for our lives in the middle of an open field with thousands of people and hearing gunshots everywhere. We were trying to hide, seeing dead bodies, seeing people dropping down to the floor, getting shot.”
At some point he got a call from Ori Danino, who he had only just met a few hours before the party. Danino was already in a safe place, but Shemtov says he came back to save them.
“Seeing miracles while I was there gave me so much hope and resilience and just the belief that I’m going back home. Faith has been a big part of my journey.”
“I remember getting to his vehicle and as we started to drive, I hear him talking with one of his soldiers. He was an officer in the army, and he says, ‘Pack your stuff, get your equipment and your uniforms, we’re going to war.’ You could really see that he cared about saving us before helping himself,” says Shemtov.
“We keep on driving and suddenly there is a roadblock of Hamas pick up trucks and they immediately start to shoot at us. I remember hearing Maya Regev at the back screaming. She was talking on the phone with her father and there’s one of the famous recordings where she’s screaming, ‘Dad, I’ve been shot. I’ve been shot. I’m about to die.’
“Then looking to the left and seeing Ori just running off from the vehicle. After the shooting stopped, the terrorists came to the vehicle. They pulled me out of the vehicle and they just pushed me to the ground. They started beating me while I’m on the ground, spitting on me, jumping on my body, tying my hands behind my back. I remember looking back at the vehicle, at Ori’s vehicle, and the terrorists were pulling Maya and Itay out of the vehicle. I saw that Maya and Itay had both been shot in the legs, but I remember Maya’s leg was basically cut off. I’m not going to explain because it’s very graphic, something horrible to see.
“We were laying there on the floor for a couple of minutes and then they pick us up, load us at the back of the pickup truck, sit on us – all the nine terrorists – and start to drive. In about six or seven minutes, we were already inside Gaza.”
Maya and Itay Regev were released in the first hostage deal in November 2023. Ori Danino was part of “the beautiful six” who survived for 11 months in captivity, before they were murdered by Hamas terrorists and their bodies recovered by the IDF.
Light in captivity
The first tunnel Shemtov was taken to was 40m under the ground. He was put in a small, narrow cell that he couldn’t stand up or spread his arms in. There was complete darkness and for around 50 days he was alone and starved.
“The first few days it was a pita a day with maybe a bit of cheese or fava beans,” he says.
“And then it became half a pita a day, then it became a quarter of a pita a day. Maybe for the last week it was a biscuit a day with a couple of sips of ocean water. I was very skinny and I could feel the bones on my rib cage and my shoulders.
“But the amazing thing is that throughout this time of darkness, I also experienced the most light. It’s almost unexplainable – experiencing light at the darkest place. They say that a man can experience light only when he’s at his darkest point and I experienced that light.
“Lying there on the floor and suddenly feeling this warmth inside your chest and just I’m smiling all of a sudden and really feeling the presence of Hashem right next to me. Feeling like everything’s okay and understanding that this is my path and he protecting me right now.
“Thank God I was I was moved to a bigger tunnel where I had maybe one or two sandwiches a day and that was for the next 450 days. I stayed alone the whole time.”
Increased food before release
Shemtov learned fluent Arabic during his captivity, so by listening to the terrorists he understood his name was on the list of hostages set to be released. He was hesitant to get his hopes up because he had been told previously that he was going to be released soon, but this time he started being fed “crazy amounts of food”.
“From two sandwiches a day it became three meals a day of meat and fish and chicken – really everything,” he says.
Though Shemtov had been starved during his captivity, he knew there had never been a shortage of food in the tunnels.
“I worked in those tunnels, I dug there, and one of the things that I used to do is go to the entrance of the tunnel and carry aid boxes with stamps of the UN on them,” he says.
“I used to carry hundreds of them, just spreading them around the tunnel. I saw food going to waste – amounts that are bigger than in the IDF. When you’re a soldier in the IDF you see crazy amounts of food. Over there (in the tunnels), there was even more.
“If there is starvation in Gaza I didn’t see it, but if there is it’s caused by Hamas.”
Depraved handover ceremony
During the staged handover ceremony, a smiling Shemtov was forced to kiss one of the terrorists on the head.
“Before I went up on stage, one of the terrorists told me while we were inside the vehicle, ‘You’re going to kiss my forehead.’ I did not agree and I told him it’s not going happen,” says Shemtov.
“We argued for a bit, but I knew I was going back home so I didn’t really care what was happening. We agreed on a hug or something, but you can see while I was on the stage the cameraman comes up to me and he tells me something. He told me to kiss his forehead, ‘Do it now.’
“I stand there and I’m hesitating, and then I kissed him. I told myself, I’m going to kiss him and I’m going to go back home and that’s it. He’s going to stay here in his own prison and I’m going to go back home.”
We will dance again
Surrounded by his family, Shemtov attended this year’s Burning Man in the Nevada desert. At exactly 6.29am, the festival held a ceremony to remember the victims of October 7.
“It was amazing,” he says.
“I was staying at the Nova Camp, this time with my family. I was up on that stage and I remember just looking at the Nova memorial with all the names of the those who were murdered at the Nova festival. I was just dancing and experiencing those angels dancing with me.
“It was a closure for me.”
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