Former hostage Romi Gonen spoke for the first time about her ordeal in Hamas captivity in an interview on the program “Uvda” on Keshet 12.
“I think the question everyone has in their mind is: were you assaulted?” Gonen told interviewer Ben Shani. “People don’t ask that question. I wouldn’t either if I were them. I think no one asks it mainly because no one wants to hear the answer.”
Gonen described, among other things, repeated sexual assaults by two terrorists over an extended period.
After the most severe assault, one of the attackers threatened her. “He puts a gun to my head,” Gonen recounted, “and he tells me, ‘If you tell anyone about this, I will kill you.’”
President Isaac Herzog commented on Gonen’s testimony, writing: “Romi Gonen’s testimony on ‘Uvda’ breaks the heart. With a trembling voice yet supreme courage, Romi revealed the hell she endured in Hamas captivity - a hell of sexual violence and a systematic attempt to crush the soul.”
He added: “Her story must be told everywhere so that everyone remembers what we went through as a people. What the hostages went through. What Romi went through. Romi, we salute your courage.”
Meirav Leshem Gonen, Romi’s mother, responded to the harrowing interview, writing on social media: “My daughter is a rare flower, a true ray of sunshine, like so many of our children. My daughter was granted life again thanks to this nation and its enormous heart.”
She added: “My daughter understands the immense, rare, and extraordinary privilege of remaining alive after such hell. With courage, she stands strong, showing all of us - and Hamas - that they will not break us, will not divide us, and that we are all responsible for one another, bound together in life. And that our light prevails.”