The former Israeli hostage breaks silence after 505 days in the captivity of Hamas

EXCLUSIVE: Buried 100 feet underground, with just enough air to breathe and without light, and sharing a space that measures only six feet for three feet with three other men, recently released as the hostage recently such Shoham shared with Fox News Digital its heartbreaking history of survival.

Shoham was taken by the force of Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023. His wife and children, four and eight, were also kidnapped that day, but did not know that when he was thrown into the trunk of a car and driven to Gaza by Hamas’ terrorists. He didn’t even know if his family was alive; With the hope of saving them, the terrorists were given just before setting fire to the house where his family was hidden.

He would spend the eight and a half months in an underground tunnel and another five months captive in five different houses inside Gaza, where his captors kept him chained, the hungry and deprived him of basic human amenities.

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But there was a mission: he was determined not to lose his humanity. Even at the times when he feared he faced death, he tried to stay concentrated. “I am not a victim. Even if this ends, I will end up with my head, looking at death in the eye. They will not break me and I will not give up on self -pity. We are stronger than the other side,” he said.

Three weeks have passed since he came home, and is ready to talk. Kibbutz Be’eri is just nine kilometers, about five and a half miles of GazaBut that short distance is practically an ocean between what he describes as two worlds. “Half an hour by car, two separate worlds,” he said. “The first: incredibly surreal, cruel beyond reason. And just 30 minutes (on this side of the border), a world of sanity, logic, dignity and compassion.”

Remember every detail of your 505 days in captivity. Such wants to tell his story for the good of the two captive partners who remain latehungry, abused and at constant risk of death. “Just when someone emerges from a lively uterus, I left the tunnel in which they stopped and born again,” he says. But the men who call their “brothers”, Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal, still remain underground. “I can’t sleep at night knowing that they are still there,” he says.

October 7, 2023

Tal and his wife and children had come from northern Israel to Kibbutz Be’eri to spend Simchat Torah’s holidays with his wife’s parents and were in the house when the terrorist attack began. He said that everyone entered the safe room, already measure that the sounds of the shots approached, tried to barrichent inside. But the terrorists opened the window, and they feared that they could throw a grenade if the family did not give up. On the same street, the terrorists set fire to any other house, burning people in life.

“I came out and raised my hands,” he said. “A man with murder in his eyes took me to the road and a vehicle. I saw about 40 strongly armed terrorists. Some of them were filming me on their phones. I was in shock: there was a complete battalion of Hamas terrorists inside our Kibutz, bodies of people who knew they were killed on the ground, and they laughed, they did not fight.”

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The terrorists threw him into the trunk of a car and took him through the border, Gaza. There, a crowd gathered. “Teenagers with sticks ran to me, trying to beat me from all sides,” he says. Taking him from the car, his captors aimed a rifle, ready, believed, to execute him and tried to force him to kneel. “I said: ‘I can’t control whether you kill me or not’, and I raised my hands, but I refused to kneel. ‘If you want to kill me, kill me, but you won’t run like Isis’.”

He was then paraded through the streets in what he described as a “march of victory.” “They were shouting: ‘Soldier! Pig! Zionist!’ A mafia gathered, children with wooden clubs trying to hit me.

34 days of isolation

He was first taken to the house of a family, where he was retained, alone and always chained, for 34 days. Although it was allowed to shower periodically, captivity was severe.

His food was strictly rationed. “During the first three days, I had Pita bread. Then, they stopped giving me that,” he says. “Food supplies decreased. Some days, I would receive three avocado spoons and three dates, or half orange of a tree in the patio.”

But the worst torment was not knowing if his family was alive. “I am 40 years old. I have never experienced suffering like this in my life. Isolation, being alone with relentless thoughts, that was worse than even extreme hunger.”

To endure, he made a heartbreaking decision. “I had to accept that my family was dead,” he says. “I sat on the floor and imagined at his funeral. I stopped in front of a grave, a big one for my wife and two little ones for my children, and I praised each of them. I thanked them for the time we had. I told them to move to me. I overwhelmed but I did not let my captors saw me cry. That was the hardest thing I have done, my family sprout in my mind.”

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505 days in hell

On the 34th of their captivity, Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal were taken to the house. Hamas’ terrorists tortured them daily, hitting them, refusing the food while they ate in front of them. The hostages were allowed only about 300 calories a day, the weight of Shoham fell from 174 pounds to 110 pounds when it was released, and speaking was prohibited. “We couldn’t move from our beds or talk. We whispered everything,” he said.

Then came a brightness of hope. On the 50s of his captivity, he received a test of his wife’s life, a letter that told her that she and the children had been retained, but were being released. “I read it, my hands trembling,” he said. “The most important thing had happened: my family was safe. I no longer needed to be a father and husband protecting them. Now, I could concentrate on my war, which I knew how to fight, the survival.”

The tunnel

By June 2024, Tal, Guy and Evyatar were moved by an ambulance that Hamas used To discreetly transport hostages, to an underground tunnel, where there was already another captive, Omer Wenkert. There were four mattresses on the floor and a hole in the floor for a bathroom. The space was illuminated by a single faint bulb. “It took me weeks to stop feeling that the walls were approaching, to adapt to oxygen deprivation,” says such.

They were given only 300 milliliters of water a day, a little more than 10 ounces. They could use it to drink or wash their hands. Rice was all they had to eat. Months passed. They were beaten, monitored by cameras, randomly deprived of food and sleep. The guards were excavators of Hamas tunnels, digging every day, even when the war extended up. “Hamas never stopped digging tunnels,” says Tal. “Not for a single day.”

The conditions were so bad that both he and Evyatar developed serious infections. But it would be months before a doctor came to see them. “My leg turned blue, yellow and purple with internal bleeding,” he recalls. “They gave us all the anticoagulants, fearing that we could develop clots from prolonged immobility. Finally, they realized that the problem was malnutrition and provided us with vitamin supplements for seven days. He knew dog food, but our condition drastically improved.”

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But abuse continued. A new guard arrived, even more violent than the previous ones. “He made us kneeling like dogs and we hit each other,” he says. “He came to shout that we were dirty Jews, we hit each other, and then 10 minutes later, he smiled and brought food.”

So, what seemed like a miracle. Such and Omer were named as part of the hostage release offer In February. When he was taken outside after many months underground, still with bandaged eyes, he felt moisture on his face. “Is rain?” asked. “No,” their captors replied, “” is Rocío. “And I realized, my name, such, is ‘Rocío’ in Hebrew.

There were humiliations to come before they delivered it to the Red Cross and returned to Israel: a procession in a stage in the heart of Rafah, where he was forced to repeat Hamas’ propaganda. But he said he didn’t care: he was going home. When he arrived in Israel, he was taken to the Re’IM Base, where his wife, Adi, and his two children, Nave and Yahel, were waiting for him. “It was a dream come true, but he still felt like a dream,” says such. “He took a few days to understand that it was real. It was difficult to assume. Emotions flooded me, as if I were floating above all.”

And there were tragic news to absorb. Eleven family members were kidnapped or killed on October 7. Adi’s father, Avshalom Haran, and two uncles, Lilach and Evyatar Kipnis, were killed. His mother -in -law, Shoshan Haran, was taken, along with two other relatives, Sharon Avigdori and her daughter, Noam Avigdori, who were later released in the first hostage agreement. Two other relatives who had come from the United States to celebrate a birthday, Judith Raanan, 59, and her 17 -year -old daughter, Natalie, were also kidnapped by Kibbutz Nahal Oz.

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And there was joy. During their captivity, four new babies were born in the family. “Among us, the Jewish hostages, there was purity,” he said. “There was dignity. The terrorists brought any horror they wanted, inflicted any cruelty and pain they could, imposed their inhumanity to us. But within our space, we preserved our internal cleaning, our humanity with each other. And that was crucial so that it was not to eat.”