‘If you tell anyone, I’ll kill you’: Gaza hostage Romi Gonen recounts sexual abuse during captivity

Former Gaza hostage Romi Gonen shares her harrowing story of sexual abuse and survival in Hamas captivity during an emotional interview on Channel 12’s “Uvda.”

Disclaimer: This report contains disturbing images, including sexual violence and torture

Former Gaza hostage Romi Gonen recounted her experiences in Hamas’s terror captivity in the Gaza Strip, including terrorists sexually abusing her, during an interview with Channel 12’s “Uvda” broadcast on Thursday evening.

Freed Gaza hostage Romi Gonen describes her time in Gaza terror captivity in an interview broadcast on Channel 12, December 25, 2025. (credit: UVDA/CHANNEL 12)

Gonen told the interviewer that the question that comes to people’s minds is if she was sexually assaulted, but acknowledges that people do not directly ask her. “I would not ask it if I were them. I also think no one asks it because no one wants to hear the answer,” she said.

However, Gonen recounted several instances when she was assaulted.

Gonen said she felt it was important to speak about such events, although she only described them in part.

“Only when you’re in this situation can you grasp what happens to the body. And fear – it sometimes paralyzes,” she said.

“I was paralyzed. I think not a lot went through my mind in those moments, except being terrified, really disgusted, and asking why?.. it’s just not fair,” she elaborated.

“There was this one moment in the bathroom, while everything is happening – I was crying like crazy,” she began to tell, adding that the abusive terrorist was “having the time of his life, was ecstatic, and had received the gift of a lifetime.”

“I remember one moment looking – there was a small window, like a picture frame, and I look through the window – the sky is blue, the birds are chirping, and this is the situation I am in right now!” she continued. “The dissonance between life outside – the beautiful, ordinary clean life – and the filth, beastliness, and disgust that is happening here inside this bathroom.”

“When he left the bathroom, I left after him. My ears were ringing, I couldn’t hear anything. I walked around and felt like the whole world was spinning, and I am completely deaf,” she added.

“All the way to the living room, my thoughts were, ‘Romi, everyone in Israel thinks you’re dead, and you’re going to be his sex slave for life,'” she recalled.

“I sit on the armchair in the living room, and I’m in absolute shock. Tears don’t just fall from my eyes – they’re pouring down. My legs were drenched from my tears,” she recounted.

“He looked at me and said, ‘Romi, are you good?’ and I looked back at him, and my head was like, ‘You son of a bitch, what are you asking me? Are you that rude to ask me that question?'” she said.

“I said to myself there was nothing I could do. This is the situation you are in, and it is the worst there is. But even in this situation, you can’t dwell on the bad. You have to get a grip, and that’s what’s going through my mind,” she told the interviewer.

“Then he comes up to me, puts a gun to my head, and tells me, ‘If you tell anyone, I am going to kill you,'” she concluded.

Later during her captivity, Gonen recounted how she was taken on a motorcycle through the Shati refugee camp, which was surrounded by IDF tanks at the time.

“All I see in front of me is one terrorist with Hamas clothes, a keffiyeh on his face, and he is ready – around him is a lot of plastic. I looked at him and asked if he was going to kill me. There was silence for a few seconds, and he told me we were going underground,” she said.

Another instance when Gonen suffered sexual abuse was when a supposed medical staff member at al-Shifa Hospital, who was supposedly treating her injuries from the October 7 massacre, assaulted her.

“I go into the shower, and he allowed himself to enter in order to ‘help me,'” she recounted.

“I am injured and have no power over him, and I am in a situation where I can’t do anything,” she recalled.

In a separate instance of sexual assault, she recounted how she was held by two terrorists in Shati refugee camp, and the abuse she suffered at their hands.

“I suddenly feel one of them coming closer to me, and he starts giving me a back massage, then he starts going down to my waist – and that’s when I cut it off,” she said.

“At first, I told him, ‘Stop touching me… stop touching me.’ I move his hand, but then he moved towards my waist and got mad. I stood up and said, ‘Don’t touch me anymore!'” she recounted.

“When I got up in the morning he told me that ‘yesterday was a one-time thing. From now on – that’s it. You and I will sleep with mattresses next to each other, when you go to the bathroom, I will go with you. Every night, I will handcuff you.’ That’s how my time in this house started,” she recalled.

Herzog: ‘Gonen’s testimony is heartbreaking’

President Isaac Herzog reacted to Gonen’s testimony following the interview, calling it “heartbreaking,” and noting that she, with “extraordinary courage” despite her “trembling voice” revealed the “hell she endured in Hamas captivity.”

The hell included “sexual violence and a systematic attempt to crush the human spirit,” Herzog commented.

“Her story must be told everywhere, so that all will remember what we endured as a people, what the hostages endured, and what Romi endured. Romi, you are a true hero. We salute your courage,” he added.