505 Days in Hamas Captivity: A Former Hostage Speaks Out

GEDERA, Israel—Omer Wenkert had nicknames for his Hamas captors. He called one of them Tznon, which means radish in Hebrew, after its bitter taste.

About eight months into Wenkert’s captivity, Tznon turned from bitter to violent. He opened the door to the underground concrete dungeon where Wenkert was being held—less than 6 feet tall and around 3 feet wide—and kicked Wenkert three times in his head and twice in his back. Tznon told Wenkert it was punishment for looking at him.

The next day, his captor demanded he do push-ups, sit-ups and squats—what felt like hundreds, he said. At some point, Wenkert collapsed from exhaustion. Tznon spit on him and began screaming insults.

“Say you are a son of a bitch, say you are a dog,” Wenkert recalled his captor saying.

After Wenkert thought he was finally alone, he lifted his head, only to realize Tznon was still there. “Why are you looking at me?” his captor screamed, as he brought a crowbar down on Wenkert’s head, shoulders and legs. The violent attacks continued, including on Wenkert’s 23rd birthday.

During that beating, Wenkert learned what had sparked the violent turn: An Israeli military operation had killed his captor’s father, Tznon told him.

Wenkert is one of 38 hostages released after Hamas and Israel agreed to a cease-fire in January. The truce collapsed last week, when Israel resumed airstrikes and ground incursions aimed to pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages. With the war raging again, those who were recently released have found themselves thrust into the role of public figures, pleading with their fellow citizens, their government and the U.S. to make the return of the last hostages the priority and end the war.

Of the 251 people taken on Oct. 7, 2023, both dead and alive, 59 remain in Gaza, including 24 believed to be alive. Forty-one hostages who were taken alive have been killed since the start of Israel’s offensive in Gaza, including at least 14 from Israeli military activity such as airstrikes.

The recently released hostages have just begun telling their stories—about being held underground with no light or fresh air; being held in chains with no medical treatment for the wounds they suffered on Oct. 7; being subject to starvation, beatings and humiliation. Many of the male hostages in particular emerged looking like a shell of their former selves—pale, thin and weak.

When Wenkert returned to Israel in February, he had lost more than 80 pounds from before his capture. He and other recently released hostages say Israel’s military campaign directly affected how they were treated.

“There needs to be an understanding among all of our government and military brass that every decision, sentence and word they utter has a direct and clear influence on our fate,” Wenkert said of the hostages remaining in Gaza. “I say ‘our fate’ because we are still there.”

Several of the recently released hostages said the plight of those left behind have spurred them to tell their stories. They have spoken to Israeli media and at rallies calling to free the hostages. Some met earlier this month with President Trump to urge him to continue the cease-fire. Since his return, Wenkert has met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife and lawmakers, and has spoken on the phone to members of the Israeli negotiating team.

Wenkert said he’s plagued by survivor’s guilt over two young men, Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa Dalal, who were held with him for half of his time in captivity and remain in Gaza.

“What reason is there that I should be here and Evyatar and Guy aren’t with me right now?” he said, sitting in his family’s living room in Gedera, a small city in central Israel. His parents walked in and out, as neighbors intermittently arrived with food for the family. He had returned home four weeks earlier, but he still looked scrawny compared with the hostage posters of him plastered around his block.

A poster outside the Wenkerts’ home reads: ‘Omer, welcome back to Gedera, we really missed you!’ Photo: Amit Elkayam for WSJ

Polls show that a large majority of Israelis support an end to the war in exchange for the freedom of all the remaining hostages, living and dead. But Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition and its supporters have said the focus must be on the military defeat of Hamas—and that military pressure is the best way to force the group to free the hostages.

“Military pressure is a necessary condition for releasing more hostages,” Netanyahu said earlier this month. “Military damage to Hamas and freeing the hostages aren’t opposing goals—these are goals that go hand in hand.”

‘Losing consciousness’

Wenkert was kidnapped from the Nova music festival near the Gaza border. He was there for less than two hours when a stream of rockets punctured the air, sending air sirens blaring and festivalgoers running. He ran into a mobile bomb shelter along the road along with about 40 others. Only 12 would emerge alive.

Soon Wenkert heard shooting. Militants started to throw grenades into the packed shelter. Panic ensued. He covered himself with dead bodies.

The militants started pouring gasoline. “They’re burning us!” someone screamed. The shelter grew hotter and hotter. Wenkert climbed out from under the weight of the bodies on top of him and ran through the fire. His body went numb, he said.

When he emerged, the militants were waiting for him. He wet his pants and they stripped him down to his underwear, tied his hands behind his back and threw him into a white Toyota pickup truck.

Soon after arriving in Gaza, Wenkert was taken underground into Hamas tunnels. He wouldn’t come out for 505 days.

Those first few days were a blur, he said.

“I remember on the first day someone hovering over me and a punch to the face, losing consciousness, and then another person waking you, another one stepping on you, losing consciousness, and another one waking you and losing consciousness,” Wenkert recalled.

At first, he was with a group of Thai hostages and 18-year-old Israeli Liam Or, who was kidnapped from a kibbutz near the border. Or and the Thai hostages were freed in a short cease-fire in November 2023. Wenkert was transferred to a narrow corridor made of concrete closed off by a blast door, with a pit in the ground for a toilet that he would cover with sand after every use. He remained there until his release. For roughly half that time, he was alone—197 days, by his count. He kept track of the days by the number of times his captors entered his cell and brought him food.

“I was sure that after two weeks I would completely lose my mind,” he said.

To pass the time, Wenkert established a routine. He walked for several hours a day up and down the corridor, which was about 30 to 40 feet long. He often spoke to himself or sang Israeli rap songs out loud. Wenkert, who had worked as a restaurant manager before the war, tried to think about things that made him happy, imagining his family or the restaurants he wanted to open one day.

He also talked to God. Although he hadn’t grown up in a particularly religious home, he somehow recalled the words to Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,” he chanted in Hebrew. “Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear not, for thou art with me.”

He forced himself to cry at times, thinking it might help him prevent any uncontrollable outbursts.

More beatings

In May, Israel entered the southern Gaza city of Rafah, and his captors began beating him more fiercely. His mental state deteriorated, he said. He imagined himself parting with his parents, younger brother and sister.

Two days later, the tunnel door opened and militants entered the room with three men.

“Hey bro, what’s up?” one of them said in Hebrew.

The three men were hostages—Dalal, 23, David, 24, and Tal Shoham, 40—who had been held together since their capture. They became like brothers, Wenkert said.

They convinced their captors to give them a deck of cards, which they’d also use to play chess. They took turns exercising, because the air in the tunnel became too hot if they all moved at the same time.

“If they wouldn’t have brought them down, I would have ended up in a catatonic state,” Wenkert said.

By October, Israel cut back on the aid going into Gaza. The men got much less food. David and Shoham became so weak that they couldn’t move, Wenkert said. Their legs turned blue and yellow.

Wenkert’s worst fear, he said, was that the Israeli military would try to rescue them. His captors had placed a bomb in his shelter, so if the troops came, he knew they’d never make it out alive.

Other hostages have told similar stories. It underscores their point, they say, that a negotiated deal is the only way to free those remaining in captivity.

After the new year, Wenkert and the other men noticed how their captors spoke more frequently about a possible cease-fire. The hostages were skeptical, having heard the back and forth before. Then all of a sudden, the amount of food they were given went up dramatically. Their captors started bringing them more than 5 pounds of cooked rice a day. After months of losing weight, Wenkert couldn’t stop himself from gorging on it, despite the severe stomachaches he suffered afterward. He thinks he must have gained around 20 pounds during those weeks.

One day, they got a bar of chocolate, something Wenkert hadn’t seen in more than a year and a half. The label said it had been manufactured the month before, a sign to him that Israel had reopened the spigot to aid. The hostages now believed a cease-fire was in effect.

The violence didn’t stop, though.

One of the guards told Wenkert he was mad that the press and world leaders commented on how the hostages being released one week appeared weak and thin. His captor told him no matter how well they treated the Israeli hostages, Hamas would always be deemed villains. Then he beat Wenkert.

Separated

Finally, Wenkert was taken above ground by his captors to see the destruction in Gaza. He was shocked.

“It’s not easy to see something like that, just like it wasn’t easy to see the sights in the bomb shelter” on Oct. 7, Wenkert said.

They spent two days filming propaganda videos. The militants ordered Wenkert and other hostages to gather around a tree stump and say that their grandparents came to occupy Palestine and that all Israelis should go back to Europe.

Wenkert learned from his captors on the day the cease-fire deal was signed that he and Shoham would be released—but David and Dalal would stay in Gaza. The four men prepared themselves to be separated. They talked about it. They made plans to meet for burgers at a favorite Tel Aviv joint once a second stage of the cease-fire was reached. They thought it would be soon.

When the moment came, they had barely two minutes to say goodbye. They embraced each other the whole time.

“I promised them I would do everything I can to make sure they get home as soon as possible,” Wenkert said.

Wenkert was freed on Feb. 22 in the central Gazan city of Nuseirat. Shoham was released from a different location. While Wenkert was being paraded on a stage by Hamas, he looked out and saw David and Dalal in a car nearby. They waved to each other. Hamas later released a video of the men watching Wenkert’s release and pleading for their own freedom.

Those last moments have haunted him. “It is a situation that can be shattering for them—to see someone who was with you for 250 days go home and you stay behind and don’t know what will happen to you,” he said.

As he recovers from his experience, he’s also focused on fighting for their return.

“The top priority is the return of the hostages alone—not the destruction of Hamas, not to destroy infrastructure, not nonsense like that,” Wenkert said. “The return of the hostages—this is where the success of the return to war will be measured for me.”