'Alone with myself in Hell,' Omer Shem Tov on captivity, faith and life after release

"Meeting Myself in Hell" is the title of Omer Shem Tov's new book recounting his 16 months in captivity in Gaza. Omer confronts the reality of captivity and how he had to find himself to survive as well as how the ordeal has changed him.

Omer spent 50 days in a pitch-black cell, isolated and alone. The experience left him profoundly changed.

That was "where I truly felt like I was in hell," he told i24NEWS. "Let's put it this way, I was like an onion, and they peeled away one layer, then another, then another."

The layers of the real world were stripped from him, leaving him more and more isolated.

"At first I was kidnapped, one layer was gone. Then Itay left, another layer. Then they took us down into a tunnel, another layer. And especially being in the darkness and starving, another layer. And in the end I reached the very core of myself. Darkness."

His descriptions are of not only a physical journey through hell, but also a spiritual one.

"To the point that there is nothing, nothing at all. There's nothing, nothing around you. It's like you're floating, like you're in your mother's womb."

"The moment I let go of my ego, the moment I allowed myself to surrender to God, I felt like a baby in the womb."

Omer recounts his internal struggle with himself as he grappled with isolation: "It was between choosing life and faith and real depression, hardship, sadness. I was angry with God, I hated myself, I hated everything happening around me, I blamed everyone, and you go crazy."

He writes about how he wished for someone to come speak with him even if it was a terrorist, just so long as he had someone to talk to.

The conversation turns to his tattoo of his Grandma Jacqueline's red kabbalah bracelet: "In 2020, my grandmother gave one to all her grandchildren, she gave each of us a red bracelet, and I kept mine on for three years. And on October 6, in the afternoon, it broke."

"I tied it onto my little bag, and when I was in the car and they shot at us, I was the only one who wasn't injured."

In one moment when rescue seemed near, Hamas continued to inflict as much fear as they could: "There was a situation where the IDF was above us, and some of the terrorists went up to fight. One terrorist remained with me in the tunnel, and the gun was pressed against my temple."

"You simply wait. You wait," he says. "On one hand, it's fear, and on the other hand you tell yourself, 'Wow, maybe everything will end here, and that's it. Maybe that's better?'"

But thoughts of his parents carried him through, "You don't want to come home in a bag. You don't want that. Purely for your parents' sake."

Omer still struggles with his mental health. "Do you get help, say, from your parents? Your family?" Omer responds, saying, "Usually I carry it with me. That's the truth. And then I unload it. Whether it's with Mom or my sister. Usually it's with a woman. For some reason."

"For example, with my sister, I can call her intending to tell her about it; she'll just open her mouth, say, 'Hello,' and I'll start unloading, I'll start crying and falling apart."

"People talk about survivor's guilt. I didn't feel guilty. I didn't put myself in captivity, and I don't regret coming back."

Despite the book's heavy and intense subject Omer still finds the humorous side of things, "Soon you'll go to the bookstore and there'll be a shelf of hostages' memoirs. I'm not going to lie to you, I didn't want to be on that shelf. I want people to know me for who I am, and I think that so far I'm doing a good job, because, in the end, the book is the story. But you can find light and you can find lessons in it."

Looking to the future, Omer says he has plans to study acting and business in the US, but that for now he's just happy he's "alive and kicking."