Freed Israeli hostage Mia Schem says she was treated like 'an animal at the safari' and operated on without painkillers
29 December 2023, 09:28
A freed Israeli hostage has compared her captivity under Hamas to the Holocaust - as she said the terrorists treated her like an animal.
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Mia Schem, 21, had to fight back tears as she told Israeli media about being held by the militants for 54 days.
She was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival as Hamas unleashed its bloody rampage on October 7, killing more than 1,000 people.
"I was screaming 'My hand is gone!'" she said, describing her abduction.
"[The Hamas terrorist] started touching me in my upper body, then suddenly someone pulled me by my hair, threw me in a vehicle, and we went to Gaza."
The Israeli-French tattoo artist's harrowing ordeal even saw her operated on by a vet after she was taken to Gaza, her family says.
Read more: Hate crimes spike in major British cities after October 7 Hamas attacks, police figures show
Speaking with a bandaged right arm, she told Channel 12 how she was operated on with "no anaesthesia" and said: "I choked up from the pain, and [the 'medic'] looks at me and says, 'Stop it! Or I'll send you to the tunnels'."
She added: "You're like an animal in the safari."
Mia was eventually released among dozens of other captives who were freed in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
Israel agreed to pause its invasion of Gaza in order to secure their release, though more than 100 are still being held there.
Mia was among the last eight to be let out before fighting resumed, and the truce failed to transform into a longer lasting settlement - with Israel vowing to destroy Hamas.
She said other hostages told her "Mia, please, don't let them forget about us" as she apologised repeatedly for being freed.
"It was the hardest thing in the world," Mia added.
She claimed to Channel 13 that she was held in a home with a family, including women and children, who she said were connected with Hamas.
In comments that will worry those already disturbed by the scale of civilian deaths in Israeli strikes, she said: "It's important to me to reveal the truth about the people who live in Gaza, about who they really are.
"Everyone there is a terrorist."
She added: "I went through Holocaust.
"Everyone there were terrorists. Entire families are in the service of Hamas."
In Gaza, where more than 20,000 people have been killed, roughly 150,000 Palestinians have fled the centre of the strip as Israel's military advances on refugee camps there.
Tanks are said to have arrived on the east of Bureij camp, one of three areas targeted by the next phase of the invasion.
Hamas, which may well have signed its own death warrant with its October 7 massacre, has reportedly gone to Cairo to respond to a proposed three-stage peace plan.
Israel has ordered people in central Gaza to flee south - though the UN has said that is difficult because too many people are already concentrated in Deir al-Balah, having fled the fighting in the north.
