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Exclusive: Former hostage Rome Braslavsky said he suffered physical and emotional abuse while being held above ground by Palestinian militants in Gaza, sometimes surviving only on half a pita bread and a morsel of cheese, and that he was injected with an unknown substance after collapsing from exhaustion during a transfer in the Strip, he told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.
Braslavsky, 19, was abducted during the Hamas-led massacre on October 7, 2023, from the Supernova festival, where he was working as a security guard while completing his mandatory military service – a fact he hid for months. During the first four months of his captivity, he presented himself as a 16-year-old boy selling shawarma at festivals.
A terrorist whom he described as a Palestinian Islamic Jihad cyber expert later arrived with a laptop and headphones and began interrogating him. Fearing that he had been exposed, Braslavsky again revealed his identity.
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This screengrab of a video released July 31 by the al-Quds Brigades, the armed wing of the Palestinian terrorist group Islamic Jihad, shows Rome Braslavsky, released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. (Hostage and Missing Families Forum/AFP via Getty Images)
“They immediately reduced my food intake by three-quarters. I was eating half a petha, a little cheese, a rotten tomato and a small bottle of water, whereas before I would get two or three pethas and a liter of water,” he told Fox News Digital.
Braslavsky said that for the next three months he was kept in isolation without daylight, describing the experience as so dark and lonely that he began hitting his head against the wall.
At that time, they were forced to walk to a huge complex of about 20,000 tents near Nasir Hospital. On the way, he collapsed from hunger and exhaustion, was injected with an unknown substance and was forced to keep walking.
“I was surrounded by members of Islamic Jihad. No one told me where we were going. I cried thinking they were either going to kill me or take me into a tunnel to torture me more aggressively,” Braslavsky told Fox News Digital.
Rome Braslavsky and Jerusalem Mayor Moshe Lion at the Jerusalem Marathon. (Photo credit: Jerusalem Marathon/Arnon Bossani)
He said, “I kept walking without energy, breathing the air as if it were my last breaths, thinking that this would be the last time I would see the light of day. I kept walking.”
Braslavsky said tents in the compound were tightly packed without any privacy, while vehicles destroyed by missiles had been converted into makeshift shelters. The camp contained donkeys and camels, and people defecated in the open. He described extreme heat that made breathing difficult.
Braslavsky lived in one such tent for four months. While the terrorist in charge instructed others not to misbehave with him, one of the four guards – a young man whose name he could not share – ignored those orders.
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Braslavsky said, “He did everything he could to break me. Once, he brought me food, spit in it, and forced me to eat. He humiliated me constantly. I had a small hole in the tent to get air, and he would come and close it. When I told him I couldn’t breathe, he would slap me and laugh with the others. He showed me videos of violence against our soldiers. He used to tie my hands and feet without any reason.”
Although she should not have been physically harmed without reason, Braslavsky said the guards routinely insulted her, threatened her family, and forced her to perform humiliating acts until it became unbearable.
Rome Braslavsky was abducted by Hamas terrorists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023. (Hostage and Missing Families Forum)
Braslavsky told Fox News Digital that the abuse overwhelmed him with hatred, prompting him to use all his might to attack the guards and harm everything he found around him, and ultimately succeeded.
Braslavsky reported, “He started running to get his Kalashnikov, and I realized I could either continue or get shot in the head. I kept hitting him with all my might. He became weak. I was weak too, but my body and mind detached from everything else and I continued.”
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Reif Peretz, president of the Nova Foundation, looks at the names and faces of those killed during the Nova festival at “The Nova Music Festival Exhibition: October 7 at 06:29 am, The Moment Music Stood Still” in New York City on April 18, 2024. (Alexei Rosenfeld/Getty Images for Nova Music Festival Exhibition)
After three to four minutes, another terrorist intervened and the guard Braslavsky who was attacked was taken to the hospital.
He said, “That day was the second darkest day of my life after October 7. It is imprinted on my memory, my soul and my body. The lead terrorist decided to respond severely to what I did, and from there I entered a cycle of continuous abuse.”
Braslavsky said that after that he was not allowed to sleep for more than an hour and a half every day at short intervals.
He said, “They would beat me with whatever they had. I had to undergo severe torture, bondage and sexual abuse. They did whatever they could with me. My body is still full of wounds. After four months of torture, I was clinically dead – my eyes were rolling and I was fainting. They decided to stop the violence and called doctors and got me treated with injections and allowed me to eat again.”
Rome Braslavsky and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni. (Office of the Prime Minister of Italy)
During Operation Gideon’s Chariots, which began in May 2025 with the stated goal of defeating Hamas and ensuring the return of hostages through military pressure, Braslavsky said the terrorist overseeing his guard was injured and lost a family member, leading to another cycle of torture and starvation.
He told Fox News Digital, “I weighed 49 kg and the senior terrorist, who weighed 90 kg, used to jump on my neck and try to break it. I was on the verge of death again. Then the propaganda video showing me was released, and it was possible to see the scars on my body because of the abuse. My bones were bulging. I could no longer go to the bathroom normally. Everything in my body had stopped working. I was close to death, and then the President Donald Trump came into the picture.”
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Braslavsky said his situation gradually improved with each step forward in negotiations toward a deal, until he was released in October 2025 after 738 days in prison.
What helps him move forward as an independent person, he said, is his faith.
He said, “My past is dark, but my future should be bright. I want to forget what happened, although I can’t do that. God gave me my life back as a gift – not once, but twice. I need to do the bare minimum, which is to live, rehabilitate myself and leave all this behind me.”
