OAN Staff Cory Hawkins and Sophia Flores
4:24 PM – Tuesday, December 16, 2025
Omer Shem Tov, a former Israeli hostage who was captured by Hamas terrorists while he was at the Nova Music Festival in Israel on October 7th, 2023, has revealed that his captors’ behavior drastically changed once Donald Trump was re-elected president.
The 20-year-old Israeli endured 505 days in Hamas captivity. During that time, he was spat on, isolated in darkness, forced to do intensive labor, and endured extreme psychological abuse.
The abuse halted slightly on November 5th, 2024, when Trump won the presidential election.
Shem Tov was informed of Trump’s victory by his captors, who had a television in the underground tunnels.
“As soon as Trump was elected, I saw the fear in their eyes,” Shem Tov said. “They knew that everything on the ground is gonna change, that something else is gonna happen, and they were scared. They were very scared.”
“They wanted Kamala to be elected; but as soon as Donald Trump was elected, they understood that he wants to bring the hostages back home. So, immediately the way they treated me changed,” he continued.
Shem Tov reported that after the election occurred, his captors offered him more food and treated him with more empathy.
“After the election, everything changed,” he said. “The amount of food, their behavior—everything indicated they were preparing for something bigger.”
During his time in captivity, despite being in a tunnel full of food, Shem Tov was intentionally starved. He lost more than 50 pounds before he was released in February 2025 under a hostage agreement.
After he was freed, Shem Tov traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Trump at the White House. Along with other released hostages, they expressed to the president that they were “so grateful to him.”
“I told him (Trump) that many in Israel believed he had been sent by God to help bring back the hostages,” he said. “And he made that promise. He made that promise, he said that he will bring back all the hostages.”
A cease fire between Israel and Gaza is underway after Trump launched a plan to secure peace in the region in September. The plan included the release of all the hostages, which all have been collected except one executed police officer, whose body remains in Gaza.
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