JERUSALEM (Reuters) -When Tal Shoham walks through Kibbutz Be’eri in southern Israel where he and his family were abducted by Hamas militants during the October 7, 2023 attack, he says it feels like a massive graveyard pervaded by the horror of that day’s events.
He is nostalgic about the old days before the attack and highly pessimistic about the future, despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s pressure on Israel and Hamas to strike a deal under his plan to end the Gaza war.
The plan has stirred hopes around the region that the conflict may be coming to an end, two years after the Hamas onslaught on southern Israel that started it.
“All this neighbourhood that once was so peaceful and beautiful, you know, all destroyed. It’s like the evil things that they did here, that the terrorists did here, is like covering everything here,” Shoham said.
GUNMEN GRABBED SHOHAM, HIS WIFE AND THEIR TWO CHILDREN
Shoham spent 505 days in captivity in Gaza, a period he recalls for the cruelty of his Hamas captors and the resilience of fellow Israeli hostages still being held by the Palestinian militants. He was released during a truce in February this year.
He and his wife Adi and their two children were grabbed by Hamas gunmen, during the bloodiest single day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Hamas-led militants overwhelmed border defences with a surprise assault, and dragged him and 250 other hostages back into Gaza in violence that shattered Israel’s image as an invincible military power.
The assault, in which about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were also killed according to Israeli tallies, triggered a massive military retaliation that has killed more than 67,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to health authorities there.
ANXIETY DESPITE ISRAEL’S MILITARY VICTORIES
Shoham can see little prospect of long-term peace even after Israel mounted devastating attacks on Iran’s leadership and its regional allies Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, Yemen’s Houthis and armed groups in Syria.
During his ordeal, Shoham concluded that anti-Israeli feelings run so deep that there is no chance for co-existence.
“After I saw the magnitude of hatred that they grew up upon and they are growing their children upon, it’s really clear that at least in our generation it won’t be possible,” he said.
Shoham spent the first eight months of his captivity above ground. But in June last year he and fellow hostages Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David were taken into the street below in disguise.
Their guards escorted them for about 15 minutes before putting blindfolds on them and taking them into a tunnel, eventually bringing them to a tiny dark chamber where another hostage – Omer Wenkert – was already being held.
“We were going to stay in the tunnel 20 or 30 meters underground, in this tomb, for eternity,” he said, recalling his feelings at the prospect.
Their cell was a narrow stretch of tunnel with concrete walls, a sandy floor, an iron door blocking the entrance, four mattresses on the ground and a hole to use as a toilet. The air was thick and they struggled to breathe.
“We were treated like animals. I mean, even animals won’t be kept in such inhumane conditions, but this is the way they treated us,” he said.
EX-HOSTAGE REMEMBERS BEATINGS, PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE
Their guards sometimes beat them. At other times they tormented them by telling the four men that they had to choose which of them would be imminently shot.
Gilboa-Dalal and David remain hostages in Gaza. Images Hamas released of David in August, emaciated in his underground cell, caused widespread shock in Israel and abroad.
“And I’m really afraid for their lives. You know, there are 20 living hostages still in Gaza in the hands of those animals,” Shoham said.
Tal was the first to be taken by militants.
He was dragged through the window of a safe room, led through the Kibbutz and thrown into the trunk of a car that took him to Hamas-run Gaza.
It was only after more than a month in captivity that he learned his wife and children had survived the attack but were also kidnapped, along with his mother-in-law, his wife’s aunt and her daughter. His father-in-law, Avshalom, was murdered.
Shoham’s wife and children were released in the first deal with Hamas in late 2023. He was freed in the second and last deal in February 2025.
SHOHAM’S SON ASKED HIM IF EVERYONE WAS GOING TO DIE
Standing in the charred safe room from which he was kidnapped, Shoham recalled how his son, 8 at the time, asked if everybody was going to die. Shoham was focused on survival.
A Hamas commander opened fire on a bullet-proof window with his AK-47 assault rifle.
“Now, I knew that he cannot hurt me yet, but after a few bullets he will reach a hole in the window and then we will need to surrender because it’s game over for us,” he said.
“He would be able to throw grenades inside and to put his Kalashnikov in this hole and just shoot us all.”
As Hamas militants walked him along a street he saw two bodies of people who were executed, shot in the head, people he recognised.
Shoham was thrown into the trunk of a car and taken to Gaza.
(Writing by Angus McDowall and Michael Georgy; Editing By William Maclean)
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