Freed Israeli hostage, Mia Schem has broken her silence to share her humiliating experience during her captivity in Gaza.
Schem, 21, spent 54 days as a prisoner in the Palestinian enclave after being shot and taken hostage at the Nova festival massacre in southern Israel on October 7. But she was released as part of a ceasefire and swap on November 30.
In her first interview since her release, she told Israeli outlet Channel 13 ‘I wanted to project the real situation about the people living in Gaza, who they really are and about what I’ve been through over there.’
‘I went through a holocaust,’ she said. ‘Everyone over there is a terrorist.’
Schem, a French-Israeli tattoo-artist from Shoham in central Israel, claimed that she was held with a civilian family, with children, while in Gaza.
‘It is families under the Hamas regime, you know. I realised that I was staying with a family. And then I start asking myself questions… why am I staying with a family? Why are there children here? Why is there a woman here?’
Before she was freed, she was made to film a video speaking about her experience, in which she said: ‘People very good, very kind to me… Food good and the kindness and everything good.’
The report made headlines as it contradicted accounts of other hostages who recounted abuse in captivity, prompting concerns she had been made to speak against her will.
In the clip, Schem said in Hebrew that ‘everything is fine’, that she received medical treatment for injuries, and pleaded for her release.
‘Hi, I’m Mia Schem, 21-years-old from Shoham,’ she said in the first clip. ‘Currently, I’m in Gaza. I was seriously injured in my hand. I underwent surgery on my arm at the hospital for three hours.
‘They are taking care of me, giving me medicine, everything is fine,’ she was heard saying at the time.
Upon her release from captivity, her carers raised concerns she had received improper treatment.
‘She is thin, she is weak,’ Schem’s aunt Vivian Hadar told media. ‘A vet operated on her arm. She did not receive physiotherapy,’ she declared.
The nature of the injuries has not been reported, but Schem says she underwent a three-hour surgery in Gaza.
She was seized by Hamas gunmen at the Nova music festival along with her friend Elia Toledano, 27.
