BERKELEY, Calif. — Omer Shem Tov, an Israeli who was seized by Hamas at the Nova music festival during its Oct. 7, 2023, pogrom and held hostage for 505 days, spoke to an audience of 500 people Nov. 18 on the University of California, Berkeley campus. The meeting was organized by the Rohr Chabad Jewish Student Center and other groups. Most of the audience were students from that campus. Participants also came from San Francisco, Oakland and other places in the Bay Area.
The meeting was part of a national speaking tour that will include Colorado, Arizona, California, North Carolina, Florida and Massachusetts.
Shem Tov was held in Hamas’ tunnels in Gaza, where he suffered constant abuse. He was told his parents and the people of Israel did not care about him. He was half starved until a few weeks before his release, when he was better fed because Hamas did not want him to look like a Holocaust victim when they let him go. During his entire imprisonment he never saw the light of day.
Shem Tov explained how two of his friends did not fare so well. Ori, who Shem Tov said had saved his life when they were captured, died in Hamas’ tunnels. Maya, who was shot in the leg, was treated by a Hamas veterinarian, not a doctor. She has yet to fully recover.
Shem Tov taught himself Arabic while in captivity. His jailers never relented in their abusive attitude toward him. “One of the main reasons I was able to survive was because of the training I received as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces,” he said.
The morning before Shem Tov’s talk, Students Supporting Israel, which sponsored the meeting, set up over 1,200 white chairs on a large lawn outside the university’s main library. On each chair was placed a photo of someone killed in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre, or during their captivity in Gaza.
A small group of 10 pro-Hamas protesters rallied outside the meeting. This was a marked contrast from a meeting organized at UC Berkeley Feb. 26, 2024, to hear Ran Bar-Yosafat, the deputy director of the pro-Israel Kohelet Policy Forum. That meeting was canceled after 200 pro-Hamas thugs broke doors and smashed windows in an effort to attack the participants.
More than 1,000 people demonstrated on the campus two weeks later to protest cancellation of that meeting and to defend free speech and Israel’s right to exist as a refuge for Jews.
After the meeting with Shem Tov, one student told the Militant that the only mistake the organizers made was not getting a bigger room for the event. The meeting was completely sold out and many people had to be turned away.