A former Israeli hostage who was launched final month has advised Israeli TV that he was sexually assaulted throughout his two years in captivity in Gaza.
In an interview with Channel 13’s Hazinor programme, Rom Braslavski, 21, described being stripped bare and tied up by members of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ).
“It was sexual violence, and its essential function was humiliation. Its purpose was to humiliate me, to crush my dignity,” he stated.
He’s the primary man held hostage to allege publicly that he was sexually assaulted.
Warning: This text accommodates particulars some readers could discover disturbing.
Rom Braslavski was on depart from his service as a soldier within the Israeli navy and was working as a safety guard on the Nova music pageant when Hamas and allied Palestinian armed teams attacked southern Israel on 7 October 2023, killing about 1,200 individuals and taking 251 others as hostages.
Israel responded to the assaults by launching a navy marketing campaign in Gaza that has killed greater than 68,800 individuals, in line with the territory’s Hamas-run well being ministry.
4 weeks in the past, Mr Braslavski was among the many final 20 residing Israeli hostages who had been launched beneath a US-brokered ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas.
Within the interview with Channel 13, broadcast late on Thursday, Mr Braslavski stated his remedy by PIJ deteriorated quickly after he had refused to transform from Judaism to Islam in March this yr, which was additionally when the earlier ceasefire collapsed.
He stated he was saved blindfolded for 3 weeks, had stones pushed into his ears to restrict his listening to, and had his rations of meals and water lowered.
Then, he added, his captors acquired what they described as an order to torture him.
Mr Braslavski stated they tied him up, punched him, and whipped him with a metallic cable – and that this was repeated a number of instances a day.
“I entered right into a loop, which I doubted I’d come out of alive,” he recalled.
In August 2025, PIJ posted a video through which Mr Braslavski was seen crying and saying that he had run out of meals and water, was unable to face or stroll, and was “at loss of life’s door”.
Following the publication of the video, Mr Braslavski advised Channel 13, his captors additionally started to sexually assault him.
“They stripped me of all my garments, my underwear, every thing. They tied me up from the… Once I was utterly bare I used to be worn out, dying with out meals and I prayed to God: ‘Save me, get me out of this already’,” he stated.
When requested whether or not his captors did “extra issues like that”, Mr Braslavski replied: “Sure. It is onerous for me to speak about this half particularly. I do not like to speak about it. And it is onerous. It was a horrific factor.”
He added: “You simply pray to God for it to cease. And whereas I used to be there, day-after-day, each beating, day-after-day, I might say to myself: ‘I survived one other day in hell. Tomorrow morning, I will get up to a different hell. And one other hell’.”
Israeli President Isaac Herzog stated Mr Braslavski had proven “extraordinary braveness in sharing the horrors of his captivity, together with a horrific sexual assault he endured”.
“The world should perceive the size of the crimes dedicated by the terrorists in Gaza, heinous cruelty, sexual violence, and abuse,” he wrote on X.
At the very least 4 ladies held as hostages have spoken publicly about alleged incidents of sexual abuse towards themselves or fellow captives, in line with Reuters.
A PIJ official advised Reuters information company that Mr Braslavski’s allegation of sexual assault was “incorrect”, with out elaborating.
The UN Particular Consultant on Sexual Violence in Battle stated in March 2024 that she and a group of consultants had discovered “convincing information” of rape and sexualised torture being committed against some hostages in Gaza. Additionally they discovered cheap grounds to consider that sexual violence occurred in a number of places, together with rape and gang rape, throughout the 7 October assaults. Hamas stated the report’s findings had been “baseless”.
A separate report by a UN fee of inquiry in March 2025 concluded that Israel had “increasingly employed sexual, reproductive and other forms of gender-based violence against Palestinians”, together with “pressured public stripping and nudity, sexual harassment together with threats of rape, in addition to sexual assault”. Israel known as the allegations “unfounded”.
Final week, the previous high lawyer within the Israeli navy resigned after saying she was answerable for the leaking of a video that purportedly exhibits troopers abusing a Palestinian detainee at a base in Israel final yr. The detainee was handled for extreme accidents after allegedly being stabbed within the rectum. 5 troopers have been charged over the incident.
