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To maintain his sanity, Wenkert spoke aloud to himself for two hours each day. When his birthday came, his ‘present’ was being brutally beaten with an iron rod.
Omer Wenkert has broken his silence over the abuse and torture he experienced during his 505 days in Hamas captivity.
When Hamas started infiltrating southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Wenkert sought safety in a shelter which was soon discovered.
“I heard ‘Allahu Akbar,’ the pin of a grenade being pulled, and then—boom. Three grenades exploded inside the shelter,” Wenkert recalled to Channel 12 News.
In the chaos that followed, Wenkert witnessed people burned alive and made the desperate decision to shield himself with dead bodies. A young woman, whose name he doesn’t know, saved his life by grabbing a grenade and throwing it back outside.
Eventually, Wenkert decided, “My parents don’t deserve to receive my burnt body. I refuse to die like this.”
When he emerged from the shelter, a group of terrorists were waiting.
“We’re not shooting. Come here,” one terrorist told him.
Wenkert was bound and loaded onto a pickup truck. Upon entering Gaza, a mob beat him brutally. Conscious of his situation, he made sure to look at cameras, hoping evidence of his survival would reach the outside world.
Almost immediately, Wenkert was taken underground into the vast labyrinth of Hamas tunnels under Gaza. Initially held with Thai hostages and fellow Israeli Liam Or, their daily rations consisted of three dates in the morning, half a pita at night, and half a liter of water shared between two people.
To maintain his sanity, Wenkert spoke aloud to himself for two hours each day. When his birthday came, his “present” was being brutally beaten with an iron rod.
“I saw the dates — I was beaten that day. That was my birthday gift. That was the day I took a rod to the head. The door burst open, and the terrorist woke me with absolute frenzy and insane aggression. He humiliated me, beat me, came at me with an iron rod,” he recalled.
Again, I had made up my mind that I wouldn’t show weakness in front of them. So even as he did it, I looked him in the eyes.”
After Or’s release in November 2023, Wenkert’s situation worsened. He was moved to a one-meter-by-one-meter room. For 245 days, he endured solitary confinement, completely cut off from the outside world.
“I thought they were burying me alive,” he recollected.
His isolation finally ended when hostages Tal Shoham, Evyatar David, and Guy Gilboa-Dalal were thrown into the 23-year-old’s cell. Starved for human connection, Wenkert’s first words to them were, “I need a hug. I need human contact.”
The four of them formed an unbreakable bond, carefully rationing their meager food for survival.
At some point, Hamas terrorists came to booby-trap their room, warning, “If the IDF comes to rescue you, we will all die together.”
When Wenkert learned he would be released while David and Gilboa-Dalal would remain captive, he was devastated. As he was being released during a propaganda handover ceremony last month, Wenkert caught a glimpse of them smiling faintly and waving goodbye from inside a Hamas van.
“That small smile was everything,” he said.
Since returning home, Wenkert has been consumed with thoughts of those still in captivity.
“I can’t stop thinking about them. I know what they’re going through; it’s unbearable. I don’t think ‘brothers’ is a word that suffices to describe our relationship. I have a need for them right now.”
“I told them, I won’t rest for a moment until you return.”
English (US) ·