'Treated like animals': Hamas's first Israeli hostage recalls 505 days of captivity in Gaza

Nearly two years after Hamas’s deadly assault on southern Israel, survivor Tal Shoham says his home of Kibbutz Be’eri still feels like a “vast graveyard,” haunted by the horrors of October 7, 2023, the day he and his family were kidnapped by militants. Standing among the ruins of what was once a peaceful community, he says the scars of that morning are impossible to escape. Despite US President Donald Trump’s renewed push for an Israeli-Hamas peace deal under his proposed Gaza plan, Shoham admits he struggles to see any reason for optimism about the future.

“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.

Hamas gunmen seized Shoham, his wife Adi, and their two children during the deadliest single day for Jews since the Holocaust. He spent 505 days in captivity in Gaza, a period he recalls for both the cruelty of his captors and the courage of fellow hostages still held there. Shoham was freed in a truce in February this year.

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The October assault saw Hamas-led militants breach border defences and drag Shoham and around 250 others into Gaza, in an attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, according to Israeli figures. Israel’s military response has since killed more than 67,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to local health authorities.

‘We were treated like animals’: Life underground in captivity

Shoham doubts that long-term peace is possible, even after Israel’s military strikes on Iran’s leadership and its regional allies, Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Yemen’s Houthis, and armed groups in Syria. During his captivity, he concluded that the depth of anti-Israeli hatred leaves little hope for coexistence. “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.

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He spent the first eight months of his imprisonment above ground before being moved in June last year, disguised and escorted through Gaza’s streets for about 15 minutes before being blindfolded and led into a tunnel. There, he was placed in a cramped underground chamber alongside another hostage, Omer Wenkert. “We were going to stay in the tunnel 20 or 30 meters underground, in this tomb, for eternity,” he recalled.

The cell was narrow, with concrete walls, a sandy floor, four mattresses, and a hole for a toilet. The air was thick, making it difficult 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,” Shoham said.

The hostages suffered beatings and psychological torment, sometimes being told they had to decide who among them would be executed next. Two of Shoham’s fellow captives, Guy Gilboa-Dalal and Evyatar David, remain in Gaza. Footage of David released in August, showing him emaciated, sparked outrage 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.

Shoham was the first to be taken from his home, dragged through the window of a safe room, and forced into a car boot before being transported to Gaza. It was more than a month before he learned that his wife, children, mother-in-law, and relatives had also been abducted, and that his father-in-law, Avshalom, had been killed. His wife and children were freed in the first hostage deal in late 2023; he was released in the second, in February 2025.

Standing again in the burned remains of the room where his ordeal began, Shoham remembers his then eight-year-old son asking if everyone was going to die as gunfire shattered the bulletproof glass. “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 marched him through the streets, he saw two bodies of people he knew, executed with shots to the head, before being thrown into a car and taken to Gaza.