Hamas Survivor Shem Tov Releases Book About His Captivity

On Oct. 6, 2023, Omer Shem Tov sat with his family to celebrate his mother's birthday. Less than twenty-four hours later, Hamas terrorists ripped him from the Nova Music Festival and dragged him into captivity in Gaza. That ordeal lasted exactly 505 days. Now, nearly three years down the road, Shem Tov is speaking out again while struggling to reclaim who he was before all of this happened.

Shem Tov talked with Fox News Digital about that dark morning on Oct. 7 when the attack struck at 6:29 a.m. People at the festival did not panic immediately because Israelis are used to such sudden violence. They thought an aerial strike was coming, so they packed up and ran for their cars. Many never made it home. Some, like Shem Tov, were taken away and only returned months later under strange circumstances.

His new book, Light From the Darkness, lays bare his experience during those terrible days in Gaza. He also discusses taking ecstasy right before the chaos started. "In my book, I talk about it, first of all, very openly," Shem Tov said to Fox News Digital. "I mean I want people to understand that I'm just like any other 20-year-old." He wanted to party and have fun like everyone else does on a normal night out.

He told reporters the drug mixed with adrenaline actually helped him sprint away without stopping as the shooting began. But the rush vanished instantly when terrorists closed in and started firing at him and his friends. Hours after being thrown into Gaza, he felt the effects of the substance again. He called it "a very scary feeling."

The first 50 days were spent in total darkness inside a cage so small he could not stand up or spread his arms out. Shem Tov suffers from asthma, which made breathing nearly impossible in that cramped space. He was also starved in an extreme way. "I was in complete darkness, I couldn't see anything," he explained to Fox News Digital. "And I just went crazy." For a while, he blamed God and everyone else for what had happened to him.

"After a week, I got to a point where I realized that God has created me with the power of free will," Shem Tov said. He could choose to believe or not believe in anything at all. He could pick between good and evil. "I realized that I have two choices: Either I sink into depression and I blame everyone and God for everything that happened to me, or either I look at the situation, and I try to make something good in some way out of it."

He spent those dark nights crying out to God with a simple prayer. "God, from now on I trust you," he said. "I know that I'm in the right place, in the right time. This is exactly where I am supposed to be, and I'm in your hands from now on." From that moment forward, he claimed he really did see light even inside total darkness.

While held captive, Shem Tov faced immense pressure from his captors but refused to break, not even when death was threatened. When they ordered him to detonate traps against advancing Israeli soldiers, he flatly said no. Even when they pulled a gun on him and told him to die right then, he stood his ground and dared them to fire. "There was some kind of red line that I cannot cross," Shem Tov told Fox News Digital. "I will just, I will not do it." He wondered if he would have been there fighting for hostages like his brothers and sisters if he had not been in captivity.

So, that was my red line and I just couldn't do it," said Shem Tov. "And I preferred to die than do it." Those were the final words before he walked back into freedom. On Feb. 22, 2025, after enduring a harrowing 505 days as a prisoner, Shem Tov finally returned to Israel. The rescue came through a massive prisoners-for-hostages swap between Israel and Hamas, instantly reuniting him with his waiting family. He did not stay quiet in the aftermath; for months he pushed hard to find those still trapped inside Gaza Strip. That effort worked eventually. The very last living hostage walked out of captivity on Oct. 13, 2025.

Now Shem Tov is back on the move again. He travels widely to tell his story and fights against what he sees as a dangerous gap in how the war gets portrayed abroad. Recently he took aim at a controversial documentary titled "NAZA," which stands for the Hebrew military acronym for "collateral damage." The film depicts casualties in Gaza and earned a 25-minute standing ovation at the 83rd Venice International Film Festival. Shem Tov did not mince words when criticizing that film.

"It felt like 25 minutes of a rain of knives that just stabbed me," he told Fox News Digital. "The war in Gaza was horrible, horrible for both sides, but in the movie 'NAZA' they only showed one side. They didn't show my side. What about me? I was NAZA. I was collateral damage."

When contacted for comment, representatives for the team behind "NAZA" referred Fox News Digital to previous statements made by directors Yuval Abraham and Rachel Szor. During a Q&A following the North American premiere of NAZA at the 64th New York Film Festival, Abraham addressed the criticisms directly. He called the Oct. 7 attacks "unjustified," yet argued that the barbarism of that day could not be used to defend Israel's actions in Gaza.

"I think it's important for me to say that, you know, it's in the film, and it's, completely unjustified, the massacre of October the 7th," Abraham said. "But it also cannot justify what you've seen in the film. It doesn't justify the slaughter of so many civilians in Gaza, the massacres at food sites."

"When I was looking at those trucks," he continued, referring to protest vehicles outside the screening that displayed images from Oct. 7, "I thought, like, I don't want to live in a world where empathy, rightful empathy to Israeli victims is weaponized by leaders like Netan, you know, cynical people who promise nothing other than perpetual occupation and war." He meant their rhetoric gets twisted into a lack of empathy for Palestinians.

Shem Tov disagrees with that framing entirely. He maintains the film erases the reality of what happened during the Oct. 7 attacks and ignores what brought the war to Gaza in the first place. He told Fox News Digital he witnessed Hamas deliberately weaponizing the suffering of both hostages and Palestinians as a tool for propaganda.

"They don't really care about who dies," Shem Tov said of Hamas. "For them, the more dead, the better."

"Seeing a standing [ovation] of 25 minutes was just, well, I can't explain how hurtful it was," he added. "How hurtful it was. Not seeing me, not seeing the true reason of what's happening there. And I mean, I think people just should know more, should learn more, should see more."

Since his release from captivity, Shem Tov has seen this ideological divide firsthand while speaking at college campuses. He said a visit to Columbia University was particularly triggering. While he was being held hostage, he saw encampments and people clad in keffiyehs on TV screens there too.

"It's sad that people are following trends in some ways," he told Fox News Digital. "Most of the students get their information from social media, and on social media, you can see a lot of lies, a lot of propaganda. I think they should open a book. They should read more. They should learn more."

Three years after he was taken from the Nova festival, Shem Tov continues to tell his story while also looking towards the future.

He spoke directly to Fox News Digital about the weight of his experience. He admits that telling his story is a responsibility he feels for everyone who never got to share their own. Yet, there is a hard line he draws in the sand: the 505 days spent as a hostage will not define him. That period marks a chapter, but it does not write the whole book of Omer's existence.

"I don't run away for a second from what I've been through because I think what I've been through taught me a lot," he stated plainly. The lessons learned are real and permanent. He carries a specific duty to his people and knows exactly where that obligation lies. He is prepared to do whatever it takes to finish the job assigned to him. But there is more to this man than the title of hostage or survivor. He insists on being seen for who he truly is. I am Omer.