‘Stop the War Now’: Relatives of Israeli Rave Kidnapping Victims Plead for Peace
Omer Shem-Tov has been missing for nearly two weeks – the same amount of time the light in his bedroom in central Israel has remained on, day and night.
The aspiring DJ was attending the Supernova rave in the Negev Desert close to Gaza when Hamas gunmen ambushed the party early on Oct. 7, killing hundreds and kidnapping others. Shem-Tov, 21, is believed to be among the hostages brought back to the Gaza Strip.
“The light in his room, we don’t want to turn it off, and we will not turn it off,” Omer’s father, Malki Shem-Tov, tells Rolling Stone. He said his wife, Omer’s mother, refuses to disturb anything in the bedroom until their youngest son returns. “Everything in the room is still messy, like he left it. We’re just waiting for him. The light is on, the mess is there.”
The desperate dad speaks softly, almost in a whisper. He’s been spending his days with other families with missing loved ones at a headquarters dedicated to bringing the hostages home.
“When I’m busy, it’s easier. When we’re wrapped with friends and families, it feels warm, people really care,” he explains. When it’s dark and quiet, his mind races, trying to picture his son.
“In the night, when you are with yourself, then all the thoughts are coming,” he says. “I wonder if he’s cold. What does he feel? Does he feel the bombing? Is he with his other friends over there? Maybe he’s by himself. Maybe he’s trying to keep his morale up. A lot of questions come.”
Shortly after alarms started sounding early on Oct. 7, Malki called his son, knowing he was at the massive Supernova psytrance festival. “He told us they were all running, looking for a place to hide. And then during the whole morning, we called him, he called us. From phone call to phone call, he was much more panicked,” the dad says. “I could hear him running. He said, ‘I see dying people, they are shooting all over. I love you, I love you, I love you.’”
The family asked Omer to send his phone’s location so they could track him and hopefully assist with an escape. “After a few minutes, they took him. We saw his [location] point go toward the Gaza border. We tried to call him several times, to tell him it was the wrong way, turn back. He never answered. The last thing we saw, the point was behind the border. It was terrible. It was the most black day of my life. It was like a huge thick, black curtain that fell on our eyes.”
With President Biden in Israel on Wednesday and Israeli troops at the border, seemingly prepared for a ground invasion, Malki says he doesn’t care about politics, only the lives of the hostages.
“For us, it’s stop the war now, immediately, and bring our dearest back,” he says. “We just want them now. That has to be our first priority.”
The brother of another Supernova festivalgoer abducted by Hamas echoed the sentiment.
“Look, I’m not a political or military person. We just want our people to come home as soon as possible. We just want them back. We’re all united,” Lion Yanai, brother of jewelry designer Moran Stela Yanai, tells Rolling Stone. “We’re in a tough situation. We all want our loved ones to come back home. It’s not a political issue. The hostages have no relation to the political situation.”
He described his sister as a gentle soul who was excited to open a vending booth at Supernova and sell her latest designs.
“She’s a person of love and peace. She works as a rescue volunteer with animals,” Lion says. “She was very excited about the music festival. This was her first time doing it. She’s a really good person. Everybody loves her.”
Rachel Goldberg is yet another parent searching for information about her missing child. Her son Hersh Goldberg-Polin, a U.S. citizen, was camping at the Supernova festival with a friend when the sirens started. The 23-year-old medic was last seen in the back of a pickup truck driven by Hamas militants. Police told the family his phone’s final ping was inside the Gaza Strip.
Described by his mom as a music-loving “hippie,” Hersh had been hiding in a roadside bomb shelter with about 30 other festivalgoers when militants found them. Witnesses told Rachel that Hersh’s best friend, Aner Shapira, picked up several live grenades thrown into the shelter and tossed them back out.
“Then they shot an RPG into the shelter and were spraying it with machine gun fire. These are all kids from the festival, wearing shorts and tank tops and beads. They were completely defenseless,” Rachel says. Hersh somehow tied a tourniquet on his left arm after his hand was blown off, witnesses told his family. Shapira did not survive.
Rachel, her husband and their two daughters are now doing everything they can think of to bring Hersh home. “We don’t live on the same planet anymore as regular people,” Rachel says. She’s tried sleeping pills to get some rest at night, but her adrenaline won’t subside, so she still wakes her up “in terror” after only a couple hours. She hasn’t watched the news. She’s been reaching out to humanitarian organizations such as the Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders, hoping they can help.
“In a perfect world, they’d call him a cab and send him home right now. In a realistic world, we would really like human aid organizations to have access to the hostages, so the families can know if they’re alive [and] whether they’re getting the medical care they need,” she says.
She’s worried sick for her son – and for all the innocent people being swept into the conflict. “I’m not a politician, I’m not a military strategist. I can’t speak with authority on those subjects,” she says. “But as human beings, we have failed tremendously. We have failed at using the intellect that is our distinct gift given to us by nature to figure out creative ways to solve our problems,” she said. “We keep finding ourselves in these horrible cycles of violence.”
She said her son is a peaceful person with dreams of taking a trip around the world starting next month. “Hersh is our whole universe, but we recognize that we’re a molecule on a vast canvas of catastrophe that’s happening right now,” she adds. “He’s not everyone’s universe, and that’s the bigger problem. If we’re able to say, ‘But what if it was my kid?’ Then maybe we would all behave differently. We live in a world with a lot of beauty and a lot of pain.”
According to Israeli authorities, at least 199 people were abducted by Hamas militants on Oct. 7 — dozens of them from the Supernova rave.
A video of one kidnapped reveler was shared by Hamas on its Telegram channel earlier this week. It showed 21-year-old Mia Schem, a dual French-Israeli national, with a large scar under a white bandage on her arm.
“Yesterday I saw my baby on television. I saw she’s alive,” mom Keren Schem said at a press conference Tuesday, according to Haaretz. “I can see she was shot in her shoulder. I see she had an operation. She looks very terrified. She looks like she’s in big pain … I can see that she’s saying what they tell her to say, but I can see that she’s stable.”
The mother then spoke in English, addressing the international community. “I’m begging the world to bring my baby back home. She only went to a party, to a festival party, to have some fun. And now she’s in Gaza,” she said.
In the video, Mia Schem stares into the camera. “Right now, I’m in Gaza,” she says. “I was seriously injured in the arm. They brought me to Gaza, and they took me to the hospital here. They’ve been taking care of me, providing medication. I’m just asking that you bring me back home as soon as possible to my family, my parents, my siblings. Please get me out of here as quickly as possible.”
Hamas’s deadly assault on Supernova and kibbutzim to the north and south of the festival killed an estimated 1,300 people. Israel responded with force. More than 2,800 people reportedly have died in Gaza as a result of airstrikes. A blockade of water, medicine, fuel, and electricity also has caused widespread suffering across the densely packed territory that’s home to more than 2 million.
On Tuesday, a massive explosion at a hospital in Gaza reportedly killed hundreds, including children and the elderly. Palestinians blamed Israel for the blast, but Israel claimed it was a misfire from Islamic Jihad, a group aligned with Hamas.
“I’m calling on everyone who can hear me, for international leaders to do something to bring back the civilians, women, babies, elderly, wounded people, sick people,” Moran’s brother says. “Everybody has to support bringing them back. International leaders can do more without war.”
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