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Ori Danino, who was murdered in a tunnel alongside five other hostages, had already begun fleeing the Nova festival on October 7 but decided to return to save Omer Shem Tov, Maya Regev and Itay Regev. Danino and his friend each fled to their cars, but during the escape, the friend saw Ori turning back and received a message from him. Ori asked for the phone numbers of Maya, Itay and Omer. "This isn’t the time to be a hero," the friend told him, but Ori replied: "I’ll be fine, I need to bring them home."
"Ori, it’s because of you that I’m here," Shem Tov wrote on Tuesday in his first long post since his release last Saturday. "Ori Danino, whom I met only a few hours before the party, arrived with a bright light and incredible energy. A few hours later, amid the chaos, he appeared like an angel, without hesitating for a moment. I have no words to thank you. May your memory be blessed."
Shem Tov wrote a post on Instagram alongside a photo of himself putting on tefillin. "To our heroic soldiers – I was there, I heard you fighting, fighting for us, doing everything to bring us home. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. May the memory of all the heroes who fell be blessed."
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He added: "The people of Israel – there is no nation like ours, and there never will be! I saw you fighting for us, and it gave me the strength to believe I would come home. I felt your prayers, and even in the darkness, I had light."
Like the other returning hostages, who have emphasized the urgency and supreme importance of bringing back the 63 hostages still left behind, Shem Tov has also joined the fight: "Now I’m here to raise the voices of those still there. It’s a duty to bring them home—the living, for recovery, and the fallen, for burial. I love each and every one of you! Am Yisrael Chai."
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The chaos at the Nova site on October 7
(Video: Courtesy of the family)
Ori managed to locate Omer and the Regev siblings, but Hamas terrorists stopped the vehicle, and the four were kidnapped to Gaza. Maya and Itay Regev were released in the hostage deal in November 2023. Ori was one of six hostages murdered in a Hamas tunnel in August. On Saturday, with the return of Omer Shem Tov home, Ori’s mission was completed: he saved all three of them.
"We feel that the circle has closed, and we’re happy for Omer," Rabbi Elhanan Danino, Ori’s father, told Ynet following the release. "We know Ori wouldn’t have acted any differently — that’s just who he was. When we were told this a few days later, we weren’t surprised. That’s Ori. He already told me that dying for the country would be the greatest honor for him. We know he went there consciously. We live with the loss in deep pain — it’s our loss. But when we think about what he wanted in life, we understand that he always saw the lives of others before his own. My solace, at least as an adult and a believer, is that this was his will."