Former hostage says government has abandoned him

Rom Braslavski posted that he is “suffering indescribably” but is not getting the help he needs.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Former hostage Rom Braslavski posted a cry for help on Facebook on Sunday, saying that he is suffering terribly but the government has turned its back on him.

“I am truly suffering,” he wrote. “Maybe it’s not visible to the eye, but I am suffering … far beyond post-traumatic stress disorder.”

When getting into the Red Cross car to be transported to Israel the day he was released — among the last 20 hostages still alive in Gaza — he told himself that now he could “fall apart” and “cry,” because “I didn’t have to hold on anymore. I can break down; it’s over. My nightmare is over, and it’s time to pick up the pieces.”

But he suffers “around ten panic attacks a day,” he said, consisting of “very rapid heartbeats, sweating, stuttering, shaking, and even screaming and violence” – and he is not getting the help he needs.

“The Ministry of Defense, the government, the hostages’ administration, the police – all the government bodies are comprehensively abandoning me, blocking me and writing that it’s late,” he charged. “From the moment I returned, I have received only contempt from the state.”

Neither Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu nor Internal Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir have contacted him since his return, he added.

Braslavski pushed back at people who have called ex-hostages “extortionists” for asking for private donations to help them recover.

“Every survivor of Hamas captivity receives NIS 60,000 [as a] liberation grant. NIS 60,000 — it’s simply shameful,” he wrote.

“The state does not give enough,” he said. “The Ministry of Defense and the state laugh in our faces. Apart from a 9,000 monthly salary, we do not receive anything significant.”

He thanked the people who have helped by raising “millions” for all the hostages, as well as all those who have given him “a hug, a kind word [and] asked for a selfie with me.”

“You are my strength, you are what gives me energy,” he wrote, “to continue the journey to come back to life.”

“I promise that I will let nothing break me. Nothing! I love you, nation of Israel,” he concluded.

Braslavski was abducted from the Nova dance festival by the Hamas-allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group during their joint Oct. 7, 2023, massacre of nearly 1,200 people in southern Israel that triggered the War of Revival.

He was tortured physically and psychologically, sexually abused and starved for two years until his release last month among the last 20 hostages left alive in Gaza as part of a fragile cease-fire agreement.