On the three-year anniversary of October 7, former Hamas hostage Mia Schem, 24, has revealed the lasting physical and psychological scars of captivity.

She tells the Daily Mail about how she survived being shot at point-blank range until her arm nearly came off, almost bled to death and was kept in a cage by her captors – as she hits out at the 'pro-Palestine sheep' and reveals why a Gaza song by Drake left her shocked.

Today, she is sitting in the home she renovated herself in central Israel – an extraordinary achievement made all the more remarkable by the fact that she did much of the work with effectively only one fully functioning arm.

The other is permanently damaged and shorter as a result of the gunshot that almost tore it from her body as she was abducted from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023.

Gesturing towards it as we spoke, Ms Schem said: 'Listen, the fact that I am sitting here in front of you is a miracle. Even talking about it now, I find myself getting stuck on the words. It is beyond anything I can explain.

'Look at my hand. This arm is shorter than the other because they shot me at point-blank range.

'My arm was almost completely disconnected. Only a small part of it was still attached to my body. I picked up my own arm from the floor and carried it with me. I screamed. I still cannot get my head around it.

'I lost an enormous amount of blood — something like five litres.

'It’s a miracle that I’m alive. And they gave me nothing. Nothing at all.' She was referring to the lack of anaesthetic she says she was given while being operated on in Gaza by a ‘surgeon’.

Just five minutes before she was shot, Ms Schem had been dancing with her best friend Elia Toledano at the Nova festival. His body was later recovered from Gaza.

Then, she says, her world changed in an instant.

'Everything happened so fast. Five minutes earlier I was dancing with my best friend. It was as though I closed my eyes and opened them again, and I was in Gaza.

'It happened so quickly that I couldn’t take it in. There were Hamas terrorists everywhere, so I didn’t see the face of the person who shot me.'

Ms Schem was the first hostage forced to feature in a Hamas propaganda video released on October 16, 2023, footage that was widely condemned as psychological warfare.

The French-Israeli was held captive for 55 days before being released in November 2023.

But three years later, she says she is only now beginning to process what happened to her.

She said: 'I’m only starting to feel it now. Sometimes I can talk about what happened, and then suddenly I have to stop.

'But I think that is good for me. I want to understand what happened to me and how I can go on from it.'

One part of October 7 remains particularly difficult for her to confront: the loss of Elia.

'I just can’t talk about Elia. It is very hard. He was someone extraordinary. People say that God takes only the good people. It is not a lie. It really is true.

'He was an angel.’

Nearly three years on, Ms Schem says part of her still feels trapped in what happened.

‘It is as if we were still in Gaza, in a way.’

And the moment she was dragged across the border is something she still finds difficult to speak about.

'There were seven Hamas terrorists with me in an ordinary private car with five seats. They dragged me by my hair, pushed me into the car and forced my head down. That is all I can say. I really cannot talk about the rest of it today.'

Ms Schem has previously spoken about what she says she witnessed among civilians during her captivity, including the behaviour of the family of one of the men holding her.

'Everyone—even the children. I saw it with my own eyes. They teach their children from the very beginning to hate, to become terrorists and to glorify death. If you kill Jewish people, your parents in Gaza are proud of you. You have brought pride to your family.'

She says she initially hoped the women she encountered might show her greater compassion.

'I thought perhaps the women would be different. Woman to woman, I thought there might be a little humanity. But there was nothing. It was worse with the wife of the man who held me captive.

'She hated me because I was being kept in the same room as her husband, the man who had kidnapped me.

'She was jealous and so cruel. Sometimes she would give me food only once every two or three days. I would get one bottle of water, perhaps two, for the whole week. It was only enough to keep me alive, not because they cared about me.'

Ms Schem says even the captor's children, who she said were 'around 10, 11 and 14', could be cruel towards her.

'They would tease me with food: "Do you want food?" Then they would not give it to me. They treated me like an animal in a cage. 

'They would talk about terrible things in front of me, not realising I could understand some Arabic. I had learned Arabic before, although the Arabic in Gaza was different. 

'I understood a lot of what they were saying. What shocked me was how proud they were.'

Ms Schem says it was what she witnessed during her 55 days inside Gaza that transformed her view of the conflict – and left her frustrated by how she believes October 7 is now understood around the world.

'People around the world really don’t understand the truth. What I saw was horrifying,' she said.

'But what I saw in Gaza, even among the little children, shocked me. 

'They treated me like an animal in a cage.'

For Ms Schem, that description was horrifyingly literal.

At one stage during her captivity, she says she was locked inside a cage in a tunnel some 60 metres underground.

With no means of escape, she says survival became as much a psychological battle as a physical one.

'I had no choice but to stay strong in my mind,' she said.

'I walked through the tunnels for about two hours. It felt endless.

'I kept telling myself: "You’re in Israel. You’re in Israel. You’re in Israel". I swear that is what I said to myself.

'I kept my soul strong. I kept my spirit very, very strong. But my body was weak.'

Her captor, she says, repeatedly threatened her if she showed emotion.

'Everything had been held inside me. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t cry.

'My captor told me all the time: "If you cry, I’ll send you to the tunnels. I’ll kill you". So I had to stay strong.'

He also sought to convince her that she would never see Israel again.

Ms Schem recalled: 'He would tell me: "You’re not going home. You’ll stay here. I’ll marry you off".'

After weeks largely alone, Ms Schem says she was eventually taken into the tunnels, where she encountered five other young Israeli women – the first other Israeli hostages she had seen during her captivity.

But instead of the comfort she had imagined she might feel on finally seeing other Israelis, she was confronted by women she says had begun to lose hope.

'Before that, I thought it might be easier to be with other Israelis,' she said.

'But actually, when I was alone, it was easier for me to keep myself strong.

'When they took me to the tunnels and I saw the other Israeli girls, they had lost hope. They were broken.

'I tried to talk to them and tell them: "No. We’re going home together".'

Then came the moment Schem had spent almost two months desperately hoping for.

She was told she was going home.

But rather than feeling only relief, she says the news left her devastated at the thought of leaving the other women underground.

'When I found out that I would be released before the others, I felt terrible,' she said.

'In that moment I felt as though I wanted to die. I will never forget it.

'When they told me I was going back to Israel, I tried to stand, but my body was so weak that I could barely do it.

'The girls looked at me and said: "Please, don’t forget us. Fight for us". And I cried.'

Ms Schem had spent her captivity forcing herself not to break down. But once she finally crossed back into Israel, she says the control that had kept her going began to collapse.

'When I was released back to Israel, my body finally let go,' she said.

'I had been holding everything under such tight control.

'When I let go of that control, my body started having seizures.'

Her experiences have also changed how she views the surge in anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment around the world since October 7.

Ms Schem believes much of it has been fuelled by what she describes as a 'pro-Palestine sheep' mentality – with people following what they see and hear without, she argues, understanding what happened that day.

'I think people don’t understand anything,' she said.

'People follow what others say, like sheep. They follow one another.

'They follow what they see in the news. The news presents what it wants people to see.

'I can only tell you what I know from my own experience: I was kidnapped from my country and taken into Gaza. I know how they treated me there.'

Even some of the world's biggest stars have left her disappointed – including Drake, an artist she says she once loved and who had even given her clothing from his brand.

'I loved him very much,' she said. 'He even gave me a sweater, a jacket from his brand.

'But I was shocked by the song he released about Gaza.'

The song Schem was referring to was a track Drake previewed in his new FOMO film, in which he raps 'we pray for Gaza'.

The lyric has caused debate because 'Gaza' can also refer to the Jamaican dancehall movement associated with Vybz Kartel – although Drake has previously signed a letter calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

For Ms Schem, who had once been a huge fan of the Jewish-Canadian rapper, hearing the words after what she endured there came as a shock, especially as few artists had been so vocal about the hostages and the October 7 attack.

For Ms Schem, the reaction reflects what she believes is a much wider failure to understand both October 7 and the experiences of Israelis and Jews since the attack.

'I’ll tell you what the problem is. People really don’t know the reality,' she said.

'They don’t know, and we don’t have enough people who can explain to the world the truth about October 7, what happened in Israel, and the Israeli and Jewish people.'

Her view of that divide is inseparable from what she says she witnessed during captivity.

'I know what it means to be Israeli and Jewish,' she said.

'In the Torah, we are taught, first of all, to be a good person, a good human being.

'After that comes the other things. Being a good person is what matters.'

She contrasts those values with behaviour she says she personally witnessed in Gaza.

'What I experienced in Gaza was completely different,' she said.

'I saw people glorifying death. When a terrorist dies after carrying out an attack, his family can be proud of him.'

'It isn’t that I didn’t believe in God before October 7. I always believed,' she said.

'But my faith changed because of what I saw with my own eyes.'

After surviving the Nova attack, a devastating gunshot wound and 55 days in captivity, Ms Schem says she believes there is a reason she came home alive.

'I truly felt that God saved me. I felt that God was watching over me.'

Now she is determined that what happened to her will not dictate the rest of her life.

'I don’t want to spend my life being sad, constantly reminding myself of what happened just to feel sad again.

'I want to get married. I want to build a home in Israel. I want to be happy.'

And despite everything she endured, Ms Schem says her biggest dream is now to start a family of her own.

She said: 'Having children is my biggest dream.

'I don’t have a boyfriend. I think I will only be able to open my heart to somebody else when I am in a good place within myself.

'Right now, that is a process.'