‘I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists … there are no innocent civilians’
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Mia Schem, one of the Israeli hostages held captive by Hamas, attended Elton John’s Oscars party on Sunday night.
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Still sporting a cast after being shot in the arm during the terrorist attack, Schem was photographed at the annual 32nd Elton John AIDS Foundation Academy Awards Viewing Party.
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Schem, 21, was attending the Supernova music festival on Oct. 7 when Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel, taking more than 200 people hostage and killing over 1,200 people.
The French-Israeli tattoo artist recounted the day of the attack, describing how she and a friend got into her car and tried to escape when rockets were launched.
While she was driving, her friend screamed, “They’re shooting,” she said in a pair of interviews with two Israeli news stations, according to a translation by The Times Of Israel. “I hit the gas to try and pass them, but they shot the tires and the car stopped.”
A truck of armed terrorists drove by, “and one of the Hamas members looked at me, and just shot me in the arm, at a very, very close range,” she said.
“I was on the floor, covered in blood, and I screamed, ‘I lost my hand, I lost my hand.’”
Schem called the ordeal “hell.”
“It’s important to me to reveal the real situation about the people who live in Gaza, who they really are, and what I went through there,” she said.
“I experienced hell. Everyone there are terrorists … there are no innocent civilians, not one. (Innocent civilians) don’t exist.”
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She said she wasn’t raped during her horrific ordeal because her captor’s wife and children were present.
“His wife was outside the room with the children,” Schem said. “That was the only reason he didn’t rape me.”
But she said she was kept in seclusion and was “not allowed to talk, not allowed to be seen, to be heard.”
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“His wife hated the fact that he and I were in the same room. You feel like you want a hug, you know, woman to woman, to break down a bit,” she said. “There were days when she wouldn’t let me eat.”
She described one moment when a young child taunted her when they “opened a bag of sweets, closed it … and then left.”
After Hamas released a video showing a dazed Schem having her arm wrapped with bandages, her mother pleaded for her release.
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“I didn’t know if she’s dead or alive until yesterday,” Keren Schem said at a news conference 10 days after her daughter had been taken hostage. “All I knew is that she might be kidnapped. 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. Now she’s in Gaza.”
“This is a crime against humanity, and we should all gather and stop this terror and bring everybody back home,” Keren Schem said.
Schem said her mother’s interview reminded her to stay strong. “I saw my mother being strong, and I said, ‘Who am I to break?’”
Schem was set free on Nov. 30 after 54 days in captivity during a week-long truce between Hamas and Israel.
She said leaving behind her fellow hostages was “the hardest thing in the world.”
“They said to me, ‘Mia, please, make sure they don’t forget us.’ And I apologized that I was leaving,” she said.
An estimated 100 hostages are still being held in Gaza.
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to destroy Hamas and recover all the hostages, either through rescue missions or cease-fire agreements, saying victory could come “in a matter of weeks.”
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