D21-year-old Mia Schem is a French-Israeli citizen who was one of 105 hostages released during the week-long ceasefire at the end of November. She was released on November 30 after 54 days in Hamas captivity and underwent extensive surgery and rehabilitation for a gunshot wound to her arm. According to her family, she developed epilepsy due to the trauma and lack of sleep during her eight weeks held hostage in Gaza.
The newspaper “The Times of Israel“ reports extensively on two interviews that Schem has now given to the channels Channel 12 and 13. This text is based on this report. Both interviews aired on Friday evening. In it she describes the “hell” she went through as a hostage in the Gaza Strip.
Schem was shot in the arm and taken hostage at the Supernova music festival on October 7 as thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing more than 1,200 people and kidnapping about 240 into the Gaza Strip. Around 360 partygoers were killed in the attack on the music festival and another 36 were taken hostage.
Schem tells of the moments when she was taken hostage and the suffering and psychological torture she had to endure in captivity. Above all, she told Channel 13 News: “It’s important to me to show the true situation of the people in Gaza, who they really are.” Everyone there is terrorist. “I experienced hell. There are no innocent civilians, not a single one.” She goes on to say: “There are no innocent citizens there. These are families that are controlled by Hamas. They are children who are taught from birth that Israel is Palestine and that you just have to hate Jews.”
The 21-year-old talks about the first moments of her kidnapping on October 7th. When the rockets went off, she and her friend fled and got into their car. While she was driving, a friend shouted: “They’re shooting.” She accelerated, but the terrorists shot the tires and stopped the car. Shortly afterwards, a truck full of terrorists drove past. One of them pinned her down and shot her in the arm at close range. She lay on the floor and screamed: “I’ve lost my hand, I’ve lost my hand.”
Schem further reports that she saw Hamas terrorists shooting at all the wounded who appeared to be alive, so she played dead. She saw a man and thought he was an Israeli and shouted: “Help!” But it was a Hamas terrorist who asked her to get up. He touched her. “And I started screaming, going crazy, among the burning cars and the bodies.”
Forced to make a propaganda video for Hamas
“And then suddenly someone grabbed me by my hair, dragged me into a car and drove me to Gaza,” she said. She felt like “an animal in the zoo” and was held for a while by a family with small children who regularly stared at her.
She was only half conscious during the journey. She didn’t understand what was going on. She told herself that she just didn’t want to die. When she arrived in Gaza, she was pulled out of the car by her hair and thrown into a back room of a hospital. “They stretched out my arm, tied it to a piece of plastic, and I lay there for three days.” She was sure my arm would be amputated,” she said. After three days she was actually operated on, apparently without anesthesia.
“Give me back my baby”
The mother of Hamas hostage Mia Shem made an urgent appeal to the Israeli government in a moving press conference to do everything possible to free her daughter. The terrorists had previously released a video with her. Mia urgently needs medical attention.
A day after the operation, she was forced to make a propaganda video that Hamas released a few days later: “They told me to say that they cared for me and treated me… you do what you do tells you. You are afraid of dying.” It was the first video of a living hostage.
She was then taken to a family’s house, Schem told Channel 13. The family was involved with Hamas. She was told that she was not allowed to speak, cry, move or show herself. “There is a terrorist who is watching you around the clock, who is raping you with his eyes,” she was told. Schem said that during her entire time in captivity she did not shower, received no medication or painkillers and was only given food “sometimes”.
Mia Schem meets her mother and brother after 54 days in Hamas captivity
Source: via REUTERS
Shortly before she was handed over to the Red Cross, they held a camera in her face and said: “Say that we treated you nicely, that the people of Gaza are nice and good.” Schem says she has no other choice remained.
Schem told Channel 12 News that leaving the other hostages behind was the hardest thing in the world for her when she was released. “They said to me: ‘Mia, please, make sure they don’t forget us.'” And she apologized and said she was leaving.
129 hostages are said to still be held by Hamas, 18 of whom are said to be already dead.