Three years after October 7: The unending trauma of a former Israeli hostage held by Hamas for 505 days

Omer Shem Tov, 23, kidnapped by Hamas during the Nova festival on October 7, 2023, at his home in Herzliya, Israel, September 9, 2026. LUCIEN LUNG/RIVA PRESS FOR «LE MONDE » Omer Shem Tov spent his September vacation in Greece. The former hostage, now 23, who was held captive by Hamas for 505 days, recounts how, three years later, a sudden flashback violently transported him back to October 7, 2023, and his long imprisonment in the tunnels beneath the Gaza Strip. "I sat down in this restaurant and the waiter came behind me and he had the voice of one of the terrorists that was with me. Exactly the same voice. For a second, I was scared. I panicked," he recalled. "I looked at him and I saw it’s not the guy. But you feel like you’re in the moment. You feel like you’re seeing the terrorists. Like you’re encountering them right now. The whole surrounding just changes in a second. You’re frozen up. You can’t move. Your heart just pounds like crazy." Since February 22, 2025, Shem Tov has been physically free. He was one of six hostages freed by the Palestinian Islamist organization that day, in one of the waves of hostage exchanges following a temporary ceasefire that took effect in January 2025. But the trauma of his captivity resurfaces regularly: "It’s something that I deal with almost daily. Some days, it’s hard. Some days, it’s easy. For a second, you think about it and it’s gone. But sometimes, you can really see it. You can really feel it. You go back there. It’s hard" You have 71.14% of this article left to read. The rest is for subscribers only.