Set him free: Omer suffers from celiac disease and asthma in Hamas captivity

Omer Shem-Tov’s parents keep fighting for their son’s release

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“Do you know where your son is, your daughter is now?... So I guess you can imagine what is the feeling of parents who didn’t speak to their son over 115 days.”

This is how Malki Shem-Tov began his short speech a few weeks ago, speaking in front of a crowd of international reporters and producers from around the world at an event organized by Israel’s Government Press Office.

He was there to tell the story of his son Omer, who was brutally kidnapped into the Gaza Strip by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7.

“Omer is a young boy, he just went to the most wrong festival,” his father Malki explained.

On that fateful day, Omer and his friends had gone to the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im, which was then overrun by Hamas terrorists who murdered, raped and kidnapped hundreds of young people at the party.

“He just started his life… 21 years old, a party guy, working as a waiter in a restaurant, just thinking about the next party and the next good time with his friends.”

When the horror began around 6:30 in the morning, Omer ran away, trying to find a hiding place somewhere in the area.

Over a period of some two hours, Omer called his parents Malki and Shelly several times to update them on his situation.

“From time to time, call to call, he sounded much more panicked,” according to his father.

After Omer managed to locate his friend's car, he attempted to pick up his friends before fleeing the area but apparently ran into a group of terrorists who kidnapped him.

“We asked Omer to send us a live location. We saw the point on the screen of the phone, we saw in the beginning that the point is not really moving and suddenly we saw the point moving very fast to the border of Gaza.”

Omer's parents at first didn’t understand what was happening, thinking Omer might have taken a wrong turn.

“I tried to call him to tell him that he is going the wrong way, I didn’t realize that this is the situation. And I called him and called him but he never answered. And the next thing was that the point was behind the border.”

“In that moment I felt like someone threw a thick black curtain on my face, like, ‘Wow, what am I going to do?’”

Shelly said that they later saw a video of Omer handcuffed inside a Hamas pickup truck.

“That was the last time we saw him.”

To make matters even worse, Omer’s health is especially ill-suited to the conditions the Israeli hostages are being held in.

“Omer is also a celiac so he can’t eat bread, and what do they give them over there? Pita, labane and bread, so what his stomach is eating is itself,” Omer’s father explained.

The panel was moderated by ALL ISRAEL NEWS Editor-in-Chief, Joel Rosenberg, who had already met Malki and his wife Shelly when visiting the Hostage Families’ Tel Aviv headquarters together with a delegation of Evangelical leaders.

Shelly told them that in addition to celiac disease, Omer is also asthmatic.

“Omer is sick, he has asthma and he doesn’t have his inhaler,” Shelly said. “When I am waking up in the morning, I also have asthma, and I know the feeling that you can’t breathe. When I need my inhaler I think of my son.”

After another Israeli hostage was released during the short-lived truce in November, Omer’s parents received some information about his circumstances during his captivity in the terror tunnels under Gaza.

“Omer was there with his friends, I will skip the details, but I’ll tell that he was with Itai 52 days and we know all kinds of stories from Itai. Omer is suffering from asthma and he didn’t bring his inhaler so it was very tough for him to breathe,” Malki said.

“And also they need to be in silence so they were whispering all the time, I can imagine how difficult it was for him just not to breathe and also he can’t even cough… So we don’t know nothing anymore after these 52 days they were together. It’s completely unknown.”

Omer's mother told the Evangelical delegation that she has kept her son's room the way it was the last time he was home. Now, the room serves as her prayer room, where she goes daily to cry out to God for Omer's return.

Together with the Shem Tovs and the families of the 136 hostages remaining in captivity, we lift our voices to the lord in accordance with Isaiah 61: “Set the captives free!”