Hostage Survivor on 'No Other Land' Film

Released hostage Omer Shem Tov writes in the Wall Street Journal about the award-winning film: The movie received standing ovations lasting more than 24 minutes. For me, those minutes felt like a barrage of knives

Gila Isaacson

SEP 23, 2026 14:22

2 min read

Released hostage Omer Shem Tov addressed the controversy surrounding the film NAZA in an opinion piece published Wednesday in the Wall Street Journal, where he shared his feelings about the movie after being held captive by Hamas in Gaza for nearly a year and a half.

"I know what it means to be 'collateral damage.' For 505 days, that's exactly what I was," Shem Tov wrote. "The anti-Israel film won a special prize at the Venice Film Festival. I haven't seen the movie, which hasn't been screened in Israel. But it's based on interviews with anonymous soldiers and intelligence officers, and presents a picture of a war in which Palestinian civilians were killed for no reason, and even deliberately. What brought this war to Gaza, Hamas's massacre on October 7 and their abduction of hundreds of civilians, remains outside the frame."

Shem Tov recounted an incident that occurred while he was held captive by Hamas in Gaza: "One of my captors told me that his mother received a phone call warning her to leave her home, because an Israeli strike might endanger her. The call came from the IDF. And so there I was, kidnapped, starved and tortured by her son, while my army was trying to protect his mother's life."

"If an Israeli strike had killed me, Hamas would have won twice, I would be dead, and Israel would be responsible," he concluded. "In Venice, this film received standing ovations lasting more than 24 minutes. For me, those minutes felt like a barrage of knives."