Freed Israeli hostage reveals unthinkable horror during captivity

Freed Israeli hostage says he was sexually assaulted regularly by Palestinian Islamic Jihad

A traumatized Israeli hostage held captive for more than two years in Gaza revealed that he was sexually assaulted and beaten so savagely by the Jew-hating terrorists that he begged them to let him starve to death.

Rom Braslavski was kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023  by the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, a Hamas ally, and subsequently stripped naked, starved and sexually abused until he was finally released earlier this year, he revealed in a chilling interview with Israeli media.

“It was sexual violence, and its main purpose was to humiliate me,” Braslavski said. “The goal was to crush my dignity. And that’s exactly what he did.”

He said the abuse was frequent — and worse than Nazi torture.

“It’s hard for me to talk about that part specifically. I don’t like to talk about it. It’s hard. It was the most horrific thing,” Braslavski added. “It’s something even the Nazis didn’t do. During Hitler’s time, they wouldn’t have done things like this.”

“You just pray for it to stop. And while I was there — every day, every beating — I’d say to myself, ‘I survived another day in hell. Tomorrow morning, I’ll wake up to another hell. And another. And another. It doesn’t end.”

Braslavski was abducted from the Nova Music Festival where he was employed as a security guard when Hamas launched its unprecedented attack on Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking hundreds of others hostage.

“I said to myself, ‘listen, you’re in a movie,’” he recalled of his kidnapping while speaking with Israel’s Channel 13. “‘If I’m in a movie, with cameras, what would the guy in the movies do?’”

He was so severely beaten by his captors that he begged them to let him starve to death, according to the Times of Israel.

“They tortured me for one reason: Because I am a Jew,” he told Channel 13. “That was why I went through what I did. Not Ben Gvir, not [Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu, not anything else. They beat me up because I’m Jewish. That’s it.”

In August, Palestinian Islamic Jihad released a chilling footage showing Braslavski emaciated and crying, claiming he could not stand up or walk due to pain in his feet.

It was the second video the PIJ released of the Jerusalem native. The group previously published a scripted video in which the captive, looking visibly ill, said he was going through “hell.”

He was among the last Israeli hostages released during Hamas’ cease-fire deal with Israel last month.