Freed hostage Omer Shem Tov says Trump was ‘sent by God’ to save captives, begs him to ‘do it again’

A group of freed hostages hold a press conference in English to speak about their experiences in captivity and to beg for US President Donald Trump to push for the release of those still held hostage.

Freed hostage Omer Shem Tov recounts spending 505 days in Gaza “without freedom, without sunlight, with very little food and water, without basic necessities.” He lived, he says, “every moment in fear.”

Shem Tov says that when he met Trump in the White House earlier this year, “I told him then, and I believe it with all my heart — he was sent by God to help save us. Because of his leadership, because he made hostages a real priority, I was able to come home to my family.”

The released captive appeals to the US president “to do it again. Use every tool, with everything you have, bring the rest back. Every day matters. every life matters. Even for those of us who made it home, the feeling can never be complete while others are still left behind.”

Naama Levy, an IDF observation soldier who was kidnapped on October 7 from the Nahal Oz IDF base and freed in January, says at the press conference that she was not treated as a “human being” while in captivity.

Levy recounts watching her friends and comrades be “brutally murdered before my very eyes” before she was “dragged violently as the entire world watched, thrown into the back of a terrorist jeep, treated not as a human being, but as trophy.”

The freed captive recounts meeting Trump in the White House, praising him for achieving “what many thought was impossible.”

“We the survivors, know you are a decisive and irreplaceable force saving lives,” says Levy. “There is no greater achievement, but the work is not yet done.”