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Mia Schem was a Drake fan. She listened to his music, admired him and even received clothing from his brand. Then she heard him say: “Pray for Gaza.” For Mia, those words landed very differently. Mia was shot and kidnapped from the Nova festival on October 7 and dragged into Gaza, where she spent 55 days in Hamas captivity. She says the wife of the man holding her sometimes fed her only once every two or three days, while his children would taunt her with food and then refuse to give it to her. “They treated me like an animal in a cage.” Mia says she initially believed that perhaps the women and children around her would show some humanity. Instead, she says she saw hatred being taught from childhood: “They teach the children from the beginning to hate, to become terrorists and to glorify death.” Her friend Elia Toledano was kidnapped from Nova as well. He never came home alive. So when Mia heard Drake’s message, she says she was shocked. And she had something to say to celebrities who speak so confidently about a reality they have never lived: “People don’t understand anything. They follow what other people say, like sheep.” “I was kidnapped from my country and taken to Gaza. I know how they treated me there.” That is the part Drake and every celebrity turning Gaza into a slogan should hear. Mia does not know Gaza from TikTok, hashtags or celebrity activism. She knows it because she was dragged there wounded, held hostage, starved and tormented. Before preaching to the world about Gaza, listen to the woman who was actually taken there against her will. Her testimony matters more than any celebrity slogan. Credit : Ynet Photo credit : Dana Kopel