Former hostage Ron Braslavski’s two years of captivity were marked by torture, severe starvation and emotional blackmail. Now free, his mother told the Israeli press about her son’s traumatic experience during the more than 700 days he spent in the hands of terrorists.
Tami Braslavski, mother of the survivor, told the station Can that 21-year-old Ron was working as a security guard at the Nova music festival when he was kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, 2023.
He was brutally tortured, severely starved during captivity and blackmailed with offers of additional food if he was persuaded to convert to Islam, his mother said.
“Rom told me that between April and July he suffered this abuse. Several times a day, they beat him with a whip and with things that I won’t even mention. He absorbed all of this”, declared Tami.
According to the interviewee, the terrorists even offered gifts and food for her son to abandon his Jewish identity. “It’s important for him to maintain his Jewish identity because they asked him to convert to Islam. They tried to seduce him with food and small gifts. He didn’t give in and didn’t do that.”
As Tami detailed, during some period of captivity, after receiving only half a loaf of bread every day at night and living with his hands and feet shackled, his son decided to take action and managed to set fire to a terrorist’s uniform and a book, using the flame to cook pasta. The smoke attracted the attention of others nearby, but his captor moved him to a more hidden location where someone could find him.
Braslavski revealed to his mother that he recognized bodies of hostages killed in Gaza shortly before being released by Hamas.
