Every Israeli hostage story is different in its details, but what unites them all is the savagery and cruelty of their captors. Some of them keep quiet when they return to Israel. It was all so sordid. They are embarrassed to talk. Others think the world should know. In the latter category is Romi Gonen. More of her story can be found here: “‘If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you’: Ex-hostage Romi Gonen recounts captors’ repeated sexual assaults,” by Leon Kraiem, Times of Israel, December 26, 2025:
Former hostage Romi Gonen shared that she was sexually assaulted by four different men on separate occasions during her 471 days as a hostage in Gaza, speaking in an interview that aired on Thursday.
The sit-down on Channel 12’s “Uvda” program detailed her harrowing ordeal, beginning with her abduction from the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, when she was 23 years old.
Gonen, now 25, detailed being taken into the Strip, being moved between several private houses, and then being taken underground several weeks into the war. The hour-long segment is set to be followed up with more of the interview next week.
As soon as she was abducted, Gonen said, she was taken to Shifa Hospital — she’d been shot in the arm amid the Hamas-led terror rampage, before being kidnapped — and already there, she was abused.
As a woman, presumably a nurse, tried to find a vein in her arm, “a guy just started to tear off all my clothes. One of them took off my shoes. Another one took my earrings off my face, another one took the jewelry off my body.”
“I was just there, with some 15 people touching me, at the same time. Until it got to the point they were tearing off all my clothes, but I lay there naked. It was like an out-of-body experience, where you’re seeing everything from above,” she said. “I was sure I was going to wake up without an arm.”
When she came to, she was taken to the first house of her captivity.
Gonen said that, when she speaks about her time in Gaza, she imagines people all wonder: “‘Did they harass you?’ And people don’t ask that question.”
“I also wouldn’t ask, if I were you. But also, I think no one asks because no one wants to hear the answer,” she said.
“I went through all kinds of assaults, from four different men, over the course of my captivity. Different levels of severity.”…
The thousands of Hamas-led terrorists who invaded southern Israel from Gaza on October 7, 2023, took 251 hostages back to Gaza, amid rampages in which some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, were killed, amid numerous acts of brutality, overt targeting of families in their homes and revelers at a music festival, and sexual assault.
Over the course of two years, through several ceasefire-hostage deals, the hostages were either rescued by troops or released in exchange for thousands of Palestinian security prisoners, including terror convicts serving life sentences. The body of one last hostage — Police Master Sgt. Ran Gvili — remains in the Strip.
Subject to every sort of sexual assault by four captors, amid nonstop threats of violence, and real acts of violence carried out over 471 days of captivity, that she almost entirely spent deep underground, Romi Gonen came home to Israel, and as brave as she had been while enduring her calvary in Gaza, she was just as brave, or perhaps even braver, for choosing to tell her story to the world.
rick says
I pray for her to mentally overcome the abuse and inhuman attacks she suffered at the hands of Palestinians. Even lying on a gurney in the hospital awaiting to see if “doctors” would attain to the arm wound she suffered. she was stripped naked and robbed. Muslims are careful to demand women cover themselves to show modesty and virtue but an Israeli captive can be stripped in a hospital awaiting medical attention! And people defend Palestinians? They come from a different culture and lack common humane behavior. These people prove over and over that they not only do not deserve a state of their own but they are not fit for normal human relations. They cannot be trusted to act in accordance with even the minimum of decent human behavior.
Myrna says
Totally agree! But this truth must reach THE WOKE FOLK in the entire political spectrum. And my guess is they do not read this platform.
We need a CIRCULAR SOCIETY in which everyone born must be raised to take responsibility and contribute to the whole community. Education for the new [re]incarnated souls is the way. NOT Left-Right-Center squashed by the Pyramid.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I do hope she recovers fully quickly, and isn’t haunted by it to the point that she can’t marry or have kids
dumbledoresarmy says
That is my prayer for her, also, and for all those hostages – male or female – who were sexually abused and traumatised.
Hopefully Jewish customs such as that of the mikveh – ritual immersion in clean flowing water – may be helpful for them.
I recall seeing footage of Rom Braslavski – the young man who was tormented and violated, for his refusal to convert to Islam – after his return to Israel and release from initial hospital care. His family or friends took him to the beach and he ran out into the surf and plunged in. I cannot imagine what that must have felt like – the sea, the open sky, sunlight, after two years buried in darkness, surrounded by evil people, covered in dirt.
somehistory says
A child or adult who is raped, especially more than once, never truly heals. But, some healing comes from telling others, by talking about what happened and being told ‘it’s not your shame.’
The ghouls who did those demonic acts on this young woman…and on other youth and adults…will reap as they have sown.
May this brave young lady grow in faith. She deserves a lot of credit for exposing the evils of the *common gazan citizen.* They are not *innocent* any more than the hamas members.
tkboxer@comcast.net says
When will we wake up and say NO MORE FUCKING EVIL ISLAM ! YOU WANT ISLAM YOU DIE !
tkboxer@comcast.net says
When will we wake up and say NO MORE FUCKING EVIL ISLAM ! YOU WANT ISLAM YOU DIE !
Magooey says
Islamic Law is a Law of Rape.
https://gatesofvienna.net/2024/6/rape-is-resistance
Magooey says
Raping captive women is normative Islamic theology straight from Hadith. Here is the Indian writer Ali Sina with a specific Hadith and commentary on female captives under Islam.
From Ali Sina’s book “Understanding Muhammad”.
p. 39 Rape
Muhammad allowed his men to rape the women captured in raids. However Muslims faced a dilemma. They wanted to have sex with their female captives, but also wanted to return them for ransom and therefore did not want to make them pregnant. Some of these women were already married whose husbands had escaped when taken by surprise and were still alive. The raiders considered the possibility of “coitus interruptus” (withdrawing from intercourse before ejaculation). Unsure of the best course of action, they sought the counsel of their Prophet. Buhkari reports:
Abu Saeed said “We went out with Allah’s Apostle for the Ghazwa of Banu Al-Mustaliq and we received captives from among the Arab captives and we desired women and celibacy became hard on us and we loved to do coitus interruptus. So when we intended to do coitus interruptus, we said “How can we do coitus interruptus before asking Allah’s Apostle who is present among us?” We asked (him) about it and he said “It is better for you not to do so, for if any soul (till the Day of Resurrection) is predestined to exists, it will exist.
Bukhari, Volume 5, Book 59, Number 459.
Muhammed did not forbid raping the captive women. Instead he made an asinine claim that when Allah intends to create someone, nothing can prevent it. He told his men that coitus interruptus is ill-advised because it would be an attempt to thwart the will of Allah. He did not say a word against the rape of the captives, and by discouraging coitus interruptus, he supported forced insemination.
He made even his god legitimize intercourse with women captured in wars, the so-called “right hand possessions,” even if they were married before their capture.
Magooey says
Hamas was proud of the rapes committed against the hostages and some videos showed up on the public internet.
https://freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/4341838/posts#21
Also see post 22 for links to the videos, if you have the stomach for that level of rot. Some of the videos show rapes of mature women, not just teens.
OLD GUY says
One thing for certain Islam is not a religion. It is high time the world leaders stop recognizing Islam as a religion. Islam is at best a cult, and at its worst a political power aimed at a criminal gang ruling the world.
All Islam dose is promote EVIL, VIOLENCE and MURDER in the name of a made up God.