South Florida family wants loved one held by Hamas home
MIAMI - It's the New Year, but one South Florida family says they're still stuck in 2023 as their loved one is still held captive by Hamas.
The family described 21-year-old Omer Shem-Tov as a loving, outgoing man.
"He's the kind of guy that when you meet him, you fall in love with him," Noa Shem-Tov said, "because he's just so funny, and he's so loving, and he has so many friends."
On October 7th, Omer went to the Nova Music Festival, the concert in the desert Hamas targeted.
"He told us that he is trying to get to the car with his friends," Noa said. "So we asked him to send a location so we can track him on the way home."
Omer stopped answering. Noa and her family watched as his location moved closer to the Gaza border.
"Then that night, we received a video of him and in the video we saw him just tied up in the back of a pickup truck with the other friend that he was with," Noa said.
In the 88 days since, Noa said life has not moved forward.
"It's hard because we just entered a new year, 2024, and everyone you know has new hopes and dreams for the new year," she said, "but for us and the other families, we're still on October 7, 2023, and until everyone is released, we cannot move on with our lives."
Some hostages, mostly women and children, have been released.
"Two of his friends that went together to the party got released, and we know they've been together with Omer," Noa said. "So they told us a little bit about the condition that they were in, and they told us about how horrible that is, and how they haven't seen the light of day and it's, it's heartbreaking."
Noa flew to Israel right away and spent two months there. She's back home in Aventura now, but is going to keep doing what she can from here.
"I just want to tell him that we miss him terribly, and we love him," Noa said. "We're doing whatever we can to bring him home. I just want him to have a hope that he's going to return back because I can't imagine what he's going through."
