Former Gaza hostage Rom Braslavski visited on Sunday the Teddy Stadium from Beitar Jerusalem, the soccer team that he supports, for the first time since he was released from Hamas captivity in October.
“Hello everyone, this is Rom,” Braslavski opened, beginning his speech on the field before a match between Beitar and Maccabi Netanya for the Israeli Premier League. “A year ago, you all stood here together with my family, my face, and the caption 'kidnapped.' And here I am today, after two years of hellish suffering, and I am no longer kidnapped.
“Today I am here, free and happy. Standing here, closing the circle, without black shirts, not a kidnapper. With an entire Beitar army behind me and a mighty Zionist city, Jerusalem. Continue to be who you are.”
Braslavski assured that “Beitar is not a team, it is the symbol of the state,” and reminded the spectators present, “I want us to remember once again our heroic troops, the bereaved families, and the fallen IDF soldiers who are all close to my heart. You saved my life. Am Yisrael Hai, our dear brothers.”
Braslavski opens up about sexual abuse in Gaza
Braslavski was born in Pisgat Ze'ev and was kidnapped from the Nova Music Festival on October 7. He was working as a security guard at the festival and was fighting off terrorists with stones when he was kidnapped.
He was the first male hostage to reveal that he had been sexually abused while being held in Gaza. “They stripped me of all my clothes, my underwear, everything. They tied me up while I was completely naked. I was torn apart, dying, with no food. It was sexual violence, and its main purpose was to humiliate me," he said during an interview with N12.
Tami Braslavski, his mother, said her son “was held alone” by Palestinian Islamic Jihad and was taken down to the tunnels only “two days before his release.”
“His captors demanded that he convert to Islam. He refused. He went through abuse, and I don’t want to elaborate further,” she told Hazinor.