“I stand here not as a victim, but as a witness… to what happens when a person, and a nation, refuses to surrender.”
As antisemitic violence sweeps the world and the West reels from the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre, Israeli hostage survivor Omer Shem Tov took the stage at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest to share his moving testimony. “I stand before you as a free man,” he cried. “But not long ago, I was a hostage in Gaza.” Amidst the heinous atrocities of October 7 and the almost unbearable mental and physical torture of captivity in Gaza, Tov found God and the courage not just to survive but to rebuild his life and inspire others.
If you do nothing else today, please watch this speech from former hostage Omer Shem Tov.
— AG (@AGHamilton29) December 19, 2025
He talks about how he found his faith in the Gaza tunnels, how things changed when Trump was elected, and the need to fight evil and defend freedom everywhere. pic.twitter.com/sUNK1Af8fl
“Thank you to everyone who prayed for us,” Tov said, “who stood for truth, because this fight is between good and evil, a fight against terrorists who turn hospitals into torture chambers, schools into military bases, who murder young people at a music festival, who kill Jews because they're Jewish, and Christians because they're Christians. This evil is spreading, but when I stand here with you today, I feel stronger. Because we're united, we are free, and together, we will defeat evil.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, Tov was at the Nova music festival near the border with Gaza. “One moment, I was dancing with my friends, and the next I was at the back of a pickup truck being dragged into Gaza,” he said. “I spent 505 days underground in terror tunnels. There was no fresh air, no sunlight, no sense of time. Just darkness…I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. At one point, I thought that I had gone blind. The hunger was quite constant. I was weak, dehydrated, and starving.”
Many days, Tov testified, “all I had was a single cracker and a few drops of salty water. But the hardest part was the loneliness…For more than a year, I did not see another hostage. No voices, no faces, no human connection, just silence, darkness, and fear. I had to find a reason to live.”
From the depths of the tunnels, Tov turned his face to the heavens he could not see. “Before my captivity, I had never really spoken to God before. But alone in that darkness, I began to pray every day,” he told the crowd. “I whispered. ‘God, how are you? How was your day? Are you okay?’ And in the darkness, I felt his presence. I thanked him for everything… for the food, even though there was almost none, for the water, even when it was salty, for my life, even though it was in danger every single day.” If only we in America could be as grateful for all our blessings.
A few months in, Israeli forces fought near the location of the tunnel where Tov was held, although they were not able to rescue him. But they left books, one of which Tov obtained. Inside, he found a card with Psalm 19 and 20 on it. “The Lord fulfill all thy petitions: now have I known that the Lord hath saved his anointed. He will hear him from his holy heaven…Some trust in chariots, and some in horses: but we will call upon the name of the Lord our God.” Tov later found out that as he was memorizing the psalm and reciting it repeatedly in the Gaza tunnels, his mother back home was praying the same psalm for his release.
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Tov pointed to the global Jihad against Jews and Christians, mentioning the Australia beach massacre, and also the shooting of two National Guardsmen in D.C. by an Afghan. Tov particularly thanked President Donald Trump for pressuring Hamas to release the hostages, saying his treatment improved after Trump’s election. “[Hamas] were terrified of him.” Now if only the Trump administration would stop pushing a billion-dollar rebuild of Gaza partly at Israel’s expense while allowing Hamas and the jihad-funding Palestinian Authority to stay in power, it would truly be historic.
“Charlie Kirk, of blessed memory, once said, ‘Israel is a civilized country, Hamas are savage animals,’” Tov quoted the assassinated TPUSA founder. “Take it from someone who spent 505 days as their hostage, he was right.”
But as Israelis and Americans choose “action over apathy, faith over fear, strength over surrender,” we will be unconquerable against the global intifada.
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