‘I’ll carry this my entire life. You can’t heal’: Ex-hostage Romi Gonen discusses her trauma

Former Gaza hostage Romi Gonen delivers a raw account of isolation, sexual abuse, and survival in Hamas captivity, telling Channel 12’s Uvda that no one will silence her story anymore.

Former Gaza hostage Romi Gonen recounted her recovery process since her release from Hamas’s terror captivity in the Gaza Strip, in the second part of 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, January 1, 2026. (credit: UVDA/CHANNEL 12)

“It was very important for us to hear that nothing happened. Wow, it’s…it’s hard to say. On the one hand, I feel relieved to hear that no one has reached the situation I was in, but…it’s just not fair,” she said, holding back tears.

“It’s…I’ll carry this my entire life, because when I arrived on the 34th day [after the October 7 massacre], I went down to the tunnel alone, and I was there for 24 hours alone in silence. That crushes you,” Gonen continued, as tears began to fill her eyes.

“I had to be alone with it, and it’s not easy, I kept telling myself, ‘You’re strong, you’re strong,’ No! I’m not strong, and no, you can’t heal from such a thing, you can’t,” she says, beginning to cry and struggling to speak through the emotions.

“How do you cope? How can we go through captivity when, after less than a month, three different guys [sexually] assaulted me? How can we move on? How can you continue to be with them without fear of it happening again? It’s just not fair!” she affirmed, trying to work through the tears.

“Only when the other girls arrived, and we started talking and sharing experiences, did I suddenly understand that I was in by far the worst situation of them all. Not even by a little – I was in a horrible situation. How do you recover from such a thing?” she asked, continuing to cry.

The “girls” Gonen referred to were IDF Observers Agam Berger and Liri Albag. Dafna and Ela Elyakim, 15 and 8-year-old sisters, joined them on the following day. Shortly after, they were joined by Chen Almog-Goldstein and her three children, Agam (17), Gal (11), and Tal (9), along with Mia Schem, who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival, and IDF Observer Naama Levy.

Emily Damari also joined them on the 40th day.

Left alone for 34 days in apartments above ground, moved to tunnels, joined by others

Gonen recounted how she was held by herself for 34 days in apartments above ground before being taken down to the terror tunnels.

“Suddenly, one of the commanders came up to me and told me that ‘maybe two girls will come here soon.'” She recalled how she told him, ‘Not maybe, bring them – I need them.”

Berger entered the tunnel wearing a hijab, Gonen said. Berger sat down on the mattress, and Gonen turned to her and said, “Can I please just get a hug?”

“That’s all I needed. I needed someone to hug me for a moment. Think about it, for 35 days, I was alone without any physical contact with human beings – except for the contact that is bad [referring to sexual assault,” she commented.

“Then, Liri comes in. They lowered them one after the other, and she joined in the hug,” Gonen added.

When the young Elyakim sisters came in, she recounted how she understood that they had been alone until now, and how that realization “shattered” her.

She also noted how she and Damari have been inseparable since joining each other 40 days after the massacre.

“If I hadn’t had Romi with me in captivity, I would have died,” Damari commented.

Damari also noted how she realized at an early stage that Gonen had been abused before they met. “I think that was also one of my first questions – whether something had happened to someone?” Damari added.

Gonen speaks to Hamas arch-terrorist Izzadin al-Haddad

Two weeks after Gonen was taken down into the terror tunnels, the first hostage return deal began. In the following days, the terrorist guards realized that she was shaken by an incident that occured in one of the apartments that she had been held in. The following day, while the first round of hostages were being released, the terrorists returned to the captivity cage.

“They told me to put on a hijab because I am not going home. I am going to the commander’s room upstairs,” she recalled.

She recounted how she was led through the tunnels to a room located on a higher level, with a telephone waiting there for her.

“I picked up the phone, and he said ‘Hello’ to me. I realized that he speaks Hebrew. He asked me to tell him everything that happened,” she said.

He listened and told her that “He wants to make some kind of deal. ‘I will put you at the top of the list [of people to be released], and in return, you will promise me that you will keep quiet [about your experiences].’ I, of course, thought ‘What do I care, as long as he puts me at the top of the list? I want to go home, and then we will deal with the promise,” she remembered, saying that she promised the terror commander.

Gonen added that she realized retrospectively that the commander on the end of the phone was Izzadin al-Haddad, then-head of Hamas’s Gaza Brigade, who has since been promoted to commander of Hamas’s so-called military wing, the Izzadin al-Qassam Brigades.

“I spoke with the number one terrorist in Gaza now,” she commented.

Gonen: ‘Nobody will silence me any more’

Gonen recalled how the realization of her coming release came as a surprise.

On the morning of her release, 471 days after being taken captive from the Nova music festival, the terrorists called her to come watch television at 10:26 a.m.

A terrorist told her, “You are going out now alone, and a vehicle will be waiting for you in the street.” She was sent out of the tunnel along with Emily Damari.

“It was a messed-up scene. We walked down the street like that, and we were like, ‘We are walking down the street in Gaza alone,'” she added.

Hamas terrorists collected them from the street, uniting them with fellow hostage Doron Steinbrecher, who was being released at the same time.

Before reaching the handover point, the terrorists transferred them to another vehicle, where Haddad was waiting for them in the front seat.

“He turned around and said ‘Hello, girls’ to us. He then asked me if I remembered our promise. I told him yes, and he told me, ‘See, you went out first,'” she recalled.

“He then said he hoped I would keep the promise, and I told him I would,” she added.

“They often silenced my story and told me not to tell it. Now I am here, sitting in front of the camera, and honestly, no one will silence me anymore. It happened to me, and it is terrible, and I deal with the consequences of it day by day, but I am here. I beat it. I am in the aftermath, and I am much stronger than it,” she concluded.