Former Israeli hostage Romi Gonen says that was sexually assaulted several times by various men and “to varying degrees of severity,” while in Hamas captivity.
Gonen, who was released on January 19 after being held for 471 days in Gaza, made the comments in an interview with Channel 12’s “Uvda” show broadcast on.
“The next question that comes to everyone’s mind is: Were you harassed? I also think that no one asks it mainly because no one wants to hear the answer,” she said.
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According to Gonen, she was first assaulted on her fourth day in the Gaza Strip by a nurse from the medical team that was supposed to assist her:
“I went in to shower and he allowed himself to enter the shower with me – because he is a nurse and he’ll help me in the shower. I was wounded and I had no power over them. And I was in a situation where there was nothing I could do; he took everything from me.”
In an apartment in the Shati refugee camp, Gonen says she was held primarily by two men: Muhammad and Ibrahim, who was younger.
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Gonen described another assault by Muhammad. “I suddenly felt him approaching me and he started giving me a back massage. And then he started moving down to my waist – and that’s where I stopped him.. At first I told him, ‘Stop touching me, stop touching me.’ I moved his hand away and then, when I moved his hand, he moved to my waist, and that’s when I got angry. I stood up and told him, ‘Don’t touch me anymore.’ I woke up the next morning and he said: ‘Listen, yesterday was a one-time thing. From today, that is it. From today, you and I sleep mattress next to mattress, pressed together; when you go to the bathroom, I go with you. Every night I am going to handcuff you.’ That is how my journey in that house began,” she added.
“Until you are in that situation, you cannot understand what happens to the body – and fear is sometimes paralyzing. And I became paralyzed. I don’t think much went through my mind in those seconds except that I am really afraid, I am really disgusted, and why? Why?”
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Romi Gonen Credit: Courtesy
Romi Gonen Credit: Courtesy
“I remember one moment where I was through the window there; a small square like a picture frame. I looked through the window and I thought, ‘Wow. The sky’s blue, the birds are chirping – and this is the situation I am in right now.’ The dissonance between life outside – the beautiful, the normal, the clean – and the filth and the brutality and the disgust happening here, inside the bathroom. It is a moment I will never forget in my life,” she added. “He presses a gun to my head and told me, ‘If you tell anyone about this, I’ll kill you’.”