Former hostages Noa Argamani and Romi Gonen are among the campaign’s highest-profile reported targets.

By World Israel News Staff

Iranian cyberwarfare networks are orchestrating coordinated online harassment campaigns targeting former Israeli hostages and survivors of the October 7, 2023, Nova Music Festival massacre, according to a new report by the watchdog group Fighting Online Antisemitism (FOA).

The nonprofit, which monitors antisemitic activity across major social media platforms, described the effort as a “sustained and multi-layered digital campaign” in which Iranian-linked accounts circulate conspiracy theories questioning whether the Hamas atrocities actually occurred while simultaneously directing violent, sexually explicit, and abusive messages at survivors.

The organization said many of the posts and messages appear to violate the content policies of major social media platforms, including rules prohibiting harassment, incitement, and threats of violence.

Nevertheless, FOA argued that much of the content remains online for extended periods without meaningful enforcement.

According to the report, survivors of the Hamas attacks “are being harmed twice” — first by the massacre itself and now by relentless online abuse aimed at discrediting their experiences.

TikTok, the report noted, is “saturated with harassment of survivors, antisemitic memes and videos that exploit popular trends to spread hateful messages or mock civilian suffering.”

The report also found that many of the coordinated accounts promote conspiracy theories portraying the October 7 massacre as a “false flag” operation— falsely claiming the attacks were staged or fabricated for political purposes rather than carried out by Hamas terrorists.

Speaking to UK outlet The Telegraph, Nova Festival survivor Omri Sassi described the emotional toll of repeatedly confronting conspiracy theories denying the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history.

“I cannot control these people,” Sassi said, referring to the online harassers. “They can write whatever they want. I know the truth. I organized the festival. I lost family members there. I invite anyone who thinks what happened is not real, or that Israel staged this festival to start a war, to come and see how wrong they are.”

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Romi Gonen told Israeli artist Ishay Ribo that his music—heard on radio during her Hamas captivity—gave her the strength to survive the ordeal.

The post WATCH: Former hostage tells Israeli singer his music helped her survive captivity appeared first on World Israel News.

The two women replied with what they described as a flat, “Oh, cool.”

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Ex-hostages Emily Damari and Romi Gonen described what it was like when they realized the IDF had eliminated Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the Oct. 7 mastermind, while they were being held in Gaza.

They told radio host Hadar Marks on a Galgalatz broadcast Monday that they saw Sinwar’s image on television and asked what was being discussed on the news.

“We see Sinwar in that famous picture on TV, with his ‘beautiful’ teeth,” the former hostages recounted. “I asked the terrorist what it said on TV. He said, ‘Your army killed 20 children.’ I replied, ‘But there’s a picture of Sinwar.’”

When she pointed out that the image clearly showed Sinwar, the captor denied it was him. According to Gonen, the same captor soon returned with a different explanation, saying their “lying army said that it killed Sinwar.” The two women replied with what they described as a flat, “Oh, cool.”

From that point, they recounted, their captors appeared to shift their tone as additional reports circulated. The women said each update adopted a more definitive description of Sinwar’s fate, until one of the terrorists eventually referred to him using a condolence phrase meaning “may Allah have mercy on him,” indicating he was presumed dead.

Once briefly left alone, Damari and Gonen said they looked at one another and quietly acknowledged that the reports were likely real.

Damari added that the situation took on an odd mix of tension and dark humor.

She said the captors mentioned that a squad commander was believed to be responsible for killing the Hamas leader, prompting the women to joke privately about how such a figure might have announced the act, imagining him declaring, “I killed the rat.”

In October 2024, Israeli forces killed Hamas politburo chief Yahya Sinwar during a firefight inside an abandoned structure on Ibn Sena Street in Rafah. The clash erupted after troops identified armed men outside the building.

According to the IDF, the soldiers did not initially know Sinwar was among those hiding inside. He and his escorts opened fire after being detected by a surveillance drone, prompting the troops to return fire and kill the group.

Shortly after the incident, images and video depicting Sinwar both during the exchange and in the moments following it began circulating online. Additional material showing the removal of his body from the site was also shared across social media platforms.

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Former Gaza hostage Romi Gonen says the top Hamas commander in Gaza tried to pressure her into a deal aimed at covering up Hamas atrocities.

By World Israel News Staff

An Israeli woman held hostage by Hamas in the Gaza Strip for over a year was forced to remain silent on the sexual assault she endured at the hands of her captors, as part of an arrangement imposed on her by the commander of Hamas forces in Gaza.

On Thursday, Israel’s Channel 12 published the final portion of an interview conducted with Romi Gonen, a 25-year-old ex-hostage who was released during the January 2025 ceasefire with Hamas.

Gonen, who was 23 at the time of her abduction, was taken hostage by Hamas terrorists during the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, 2023.

Wounded during the October 7 invasion, Gonen was repeatedly sexually harassed while in captivity and was raped or sexually assaulted by four of her captors, including one incident during which she was threatened at gunpoint.

In previous segments of the interview aired in late December, Gonen revealed details of the assaults, as well as her fears afterward that she might have been pregnant after she lost her period.

In the portion of the interview aired on Thursday, Gonen explained the timing of her public statements revealing the sexual assaults, stating that she felt compelled to remain silent until all of the living hostages were returned, citing demands by the most senior Hamas official in Gaza.

Gonen said that for 35 days of her 471-day captivity, she and a second female hostage were used as human shields by Izz al-Din al-Haddad, commander of Hamas’ military wing and leader of the terrorist group in Gaza following the killing of Mohammed Sinwar last May.

During the first Gaza ceasefire, reached in November 2023, al-Haddad offered to put Gonen on the top of the list of hostages to be released in any subsequent deals with Israel, while demanding that she remain quiet regarding the rapes she endured in captivity.

When she and two other captives were set to be returned to Israel during the January 2025 ceasefire, al-Haddad personally accompanied Gonen and the other hostages, telling her that he expected her not to reveal the sexual assaults once she was back in Israel.

“He said, ‘Do you remember our promise? Here, you’re going out first.’ And then he said, ‘Do you remember your promise to me? I hope you fulfill it,'” Gonen recalled.

“I told him, ‘I’ll fulfill the promise,’ and we went our separate ways for eternity, thank God.”

For the next nine months, Gonen refrained from speaking out on the sexual abuse, fearing that if she revealed the assaults, al-Haddad would have the remaining hostages punished as a form of reprisal.

Once the last of the living hostages were returned in October, and with all but one of the bodies of the slain hostages handed over, Gonen decided to go public with the sexual assaults.

Of her former captor, Gonen said: “He is smart, unexpected, and God-willing, we will kill him.”

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Former hostage Romi Gonen said she felt relief that other captive women did not endure the same sexual assault she suffered, while also expressing the deep pain of being singled out, adding that the trauma will stay with her forever.

"I'll carry this my intire life. You can't heal from such a thing"

Brave and heartbreaking captivity survivor Romi Gonen's testimony that aired tonight .@Uvda_tweet pic.twitter.com/RjSIQUWDpD

— Iris (@streetwize) January 1, 2026

The post WATCH: ‘I’ll carry this my entire life’ — Former hostage describes trauma after sexual assault appeared first on World Israel News.

Freed hostage Romi Gonen recounted the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Hamas while in captivity, revealing harrowing, previously undisclosed details of what hostages endured.

The post WATCH: Former hostage Romi Gonen speaks out about sexual abuse in captivity appeared first on World Israel News.

The president’s pressure even before his inauguration was what led to the hostage deal, Eitan Gonen wrote.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Romi Gonen’s father gave full credit to U.S. President Donald Trump for his daughter’s freedom and asked him to continue his efforts so that all the remaining hostages will come home as well.

“The person who made seeing my daughter possible, after so many months of despair and failed negotiations, was President Donald Trump,” Eitan Gonen wrote in an op-ed in The New York Post that was published on Saturday.

“When he set a Jan. 20 deadline for the deal, it applied the necessary pressure, setting in motion the events that would bring Romi home,” he continued, adding that he would be “honored” to one day shake the president’s hand “and express my gratitude for his role in reuniting our family.”

Gonen then begged the president to continue his efforts for those still in the hands of Hamas and other terror groups in Gaza.

“For the 79 hostages still in captivity as of Friday, including dozens who aren’t even part of the current phase of negotiations, President Trump is their only hope,” he continued. “Only he could help other families experience the reunion I had. Only he can make the next stages of the deal possible.”

Romi was freed along with Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari on January 19 in the first of six scheduled weekly exchanges of hostages for Palestinian security prisoners. The negotiations had lasted for months before Trump’s November victory in the American elections.

The second stage of the negotiations, for the younger, live, male hostages, including IDF soldiers and foreign nationals, are beginning now in Qatar. Hamas is demanding that Israel free more terrorist prisoners and a complete withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza in return.

There is tremendous pressure from much of the Israeli public for a deal to be inked, especially after the release Saturday of hostages Ohad Ben Ami, Or Levy, and Eli Sharabi, who were emaciated, very pale, and shaky on their legs.

Many Jews and non-Jews had the same thoughts when seeing their gaunt frames, and President Trump expressed it clearly: “I watched the hostages come back today, and they looked like Holocaust survivors. They were in horrible condition” and looking “25 years older.”

While not going into detail about what he meant, he said repeatedly, “I don’t know how much longer we are going to take that,” and “at some point, we’re going to lose our patience.”

Holocaust survivors told The Post Sunday that the images of Ben Ami, Levy, and Sharabi brought them back to their horrific experiences in the concentration camps.

“It’s a sorry sight to look at, and even sorrier we have to discuss it,” said 97-year-old Aron Krell, who survived several brutal German camps. “It brings back the memories you try to forget, but you can’t forget.”

“When I saw their pictures coming out of captivity, they looked so emaciated and so sick,” he said. “And the world doesn’t care. I can’t understand — where is the outrage?”

Another nonagenarian survivor who spoke to the New York paper, Lucy Lipiner, wrote on X, ““The horrible images of the hostages pale and starved that were released yesterday brought me back to a very dark time in my life.”

“I saw almost skeletal men walking,” she added. “The worst thing about them was the depression that was written on their faces – the hollowed cheeks, sunken-in faces… can you imagine this emotional torture, on top of physical torture?

“The three men look like they came out from Auschwitz.”

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Last Sunday, three female hostages were released after over a year of captivity in Gaza, and this Saturday, four more hostages are expected to be set free in exchange for hundreds of violent terrorists.

The post WATCH: Romi Gonen’s grandmother watches as massive hostage poster featuring Romi’s face is removed appeared first on World Israel News.

While responding to a call from Israel’s Kan News, Eitan Gonen recited the ‘Shehecheyanu’ blessing in honor of the family’s first time seeing Romi in over a year.

The post WATCH: Romi Gonen’s parents recite blessing over news of daughter’s release appeared first on World Israel News.

Meirav Leshem Gonen, the mother of 23-year-old hostage Romi Gonen, urged the United Nations Council to stand firmly against Hamas, condemning them as kidnappers and rapists.

The post WATCH: ‘Please let me hug my daughter again,’ pleads mother of hostage appeared first on World Israel News.