Check It Out: A hostage shares his story

By Joan Janzen

This kind of struck me as funny …. “I hate it when I’m talking to myself and suddenly realize I wasn’t paying attention and then have to start all over.”

22-year-old Omer spent a lot of time talking to himself while held hostage in Gaza for nearly two years. The Israeli citizen immediately began sharing his story after his release in 2025, in an effort to help the remaining hostages.

At the time of his capture, the 20-year-old was shot at resulting in two of his friends sustaining serious leg wounds. “They loaded us on the back of a truck and sat on us. As we got into Gaza I remember hearing the sound of the cheering people,” he recalled. Women and children were cheering, and shots were fired in the air. “It was like a holiday for them.”

His friends who were brother and sister, were taken to hospital and brought back to a room where they spent the next 53 days with Omer. At the hospital the bullets had been removed without anesthetic or medication. The terrorists took their shoes and socks, forced them to talk in quiet whispers at all times, and gave them very little food.

“I didn’t know there were so many other hostages,” Omer said. He thought he and his friends were the only ones.

After 50 days Omer’s friends were sent home. “I was happy for them but the feeling of being left behind was very very hard,” he admitted. During the first three days of being alone he thought he was going crazy; however he was about to experience more challenging times.

Omer was led for an hour down a tunnel and placed in a tiny cell, not wide enough to stretch out his arms and not tall enough to be able to stand up straight. It was so dark inside he couldn’t see his hand in front of his face. He was there for 80 days, given one biscuit to eat each day along with a few sips of salty water, and didn’t shower for 80 days. “I could scrape the dirt off my skin,” he said.

“By the last day I was so so weak; I asked God please take me somewhere. Ten minutes later they let me out of the cell,” he said. After walking for an hour he was taken to a big room in the tunnels, where Omer saw white walls for the first time in months.

“I took a shower and they gave me some food. I ate like crazy!” Omer said. His captors called him a Jewish pig but he was so hungry he didn’t care.

“They told me I’m going back to the small cell the next day, but during the night the way to the cell was bombed and we couldn’t go there,” he reported, recalling another answer to prayer.

Omer remained there for 400 days, along with nine terrorists. “I really did try to understand their side, but they don’t want peace,” he said. “They used to remind me all day long - they’ll destroy Israel. I’ve seen the way they hate us.”

After twenty-seven days some of his captors went above ground and came back with some books the IDF soldiers had left behind. One of the books was the Old Testament story of Joseph being thrown into a pit and being rescued.

“I told the leader I would cook and clean for them if they just let me have that one book,” he said. “The leader gave me the book. I read it about a thousand times. It kept me going and imagining I’m going to get out of the pit. It was God’s way of helping me.”

In return Omer cooked, cleaned, did electrical and plumbing jobs and dug in the tunnels. “I bonded with them as a way to survive,” he said. “They would curse me, spit on me, but I never experienced physical abuse, thank God. I was their slave.”

While in captivity, Omer learned to understand Arabic, but didn’t let his captors know. “I listened to everything that was important and remembered it. When I came back home the IDF told me I gave the most helpful intelligence they ever got.”

After 400 days, he began receiving three meals a day and snacks in between; Omer suspected they were preparing him to go home. Fifty days later he was blindfolded and led outside, where he breathed fresh air and felt sunshine for the first time!

He was taken to a tunnel along with two other hostages. “They took off our blindfolds and I could see them. They looked like holocaust survivors,” he recalled. “Because I ate so much during the last month I had lost 39 pounds.”

Omer described his homecoming as amazing! “We went to the hospital by helicopter. They gave me a whiteboard and said I should write something for the media. I wrote: I’m OK, and I want a burger please. I got to the hospital and we had thousands of burgers. We gave them to everyone in the hospital,” he said.

That first night his family all wanted to sleep in the same hospital room. “My mom sat next to me and looked at me all night long, like a newborn baby, watching me breathe,” he recalled.

Since returning home he appreciates the small things in life: sunshine, food on his plate, a shower, time spent with family.

“Most people don’t understand what we’ve been through. I tell people: trust God, keep on praying, and say thank you. That’s something I learned while I was there. Try to make the best out of what is given to you.”

Not only did Omer speak those words, but they helped him to survive for for almost two years.