‘Get me out of here’: Palestinian Islamic Jihad airs video of hostage Rom Braslavski
Mother says ‘he’s aged 10 years’; says they heard about video from media: PM’s son ‘is drinking margarita on Miami beach while my son is underground, and he doesn’t have time to update me?’
The Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group released a video on Wednesday showing hostage Rom Braslavski, 21, whom they are holding captive in the Gaza Strip.
The video was the first recorded sign of life for Braslavski, 558 days since the off-duty soldier, a resident of Jerusalem, was abducted from the Nova music festival, where he was working as a security guard. His family has shared testimonies from partygoers that Braslavski rescued them amid the onslaught.
The family approved publication of a short clip from the video, with the hostage’s face blurred. Based on the content, the footage was filmed in recent weeks.
In the clip — whose contents were likely dictated by his captors — Braslasvski is heard complaining of an unspecified illness that makes his whole body itch, and appealing to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US President Donald Trump to secure his release, asking: “Where are you?”
In the video, Braslavski also describes his general physical and mental condition as difficult, and speaks about the ongoing bombings in Gaza. Addressing Netanyahu, he demands: “Can you get me out of here?”
Last month, Sasha Troufanov — released in the January hostage-ceasefire deal that has since collapsed — said he was briefly held alongside Braslavski in Gaza, providing the first evidence of any sort that the latter was alive after his abduction.
Tami Braslavski, Rom’s mother, learned of the video from news reports and said no representative from the government had reached out to inform her of the clip before it was made public.
“Horrifying! A shame for the State of Israel. Shocking that I need to see it on Telegram like everyone. Not [IDF hostage point person] Nitzan Alon, not [government hostage point person] Gal Hirsch, not [Netanyahu], nobody’s phoning us,” she said, according to Ynet.
“I don’t even recognize my son. He has aged 10 years. This isn’t my Rom. He’s tough, and he looks terrible. If they broke Rom, they’ll break anyone,” she charged.
Addressing Netanyahu, the hostage’s mother added: “His son [Yair] is sitting in Miami and drinking a margarita on the beach while my son is underground, and he doesn’t have time to call to update me? They know there’s a video and can’t even find the time to talk to me?”
Rom’s brother Amit, too, assailed the government for its lack of communication, lamenting on Instagram that “we are abandoned every day anew with shocking and shameful conduct.”
Speaking to Hebrew i24 News, Amit said of the video that on the one hand, he is gladdened to see the sign of life, and at the same time, “it breaks your heart to see him like this, to know we can’t do anything.”
Last month, Troufanov posted a video to social media about Braslavski, including a personal message — delivered in Hebrew and in Arabic — assuring Rom, “I, your friends, your family, and all the people of Israel are praying for your well-being and doing everything possible to bring you home.”
Released hostage Sasha Troufanov sends a personal message to hostage Rom Braslavski, whom he met during captivity:
“Rom, I hope my voice will be a light and a source of hope for you in the dark and gloomy place where you are. I want you to know that I, your friends, your family,… pic.twitter.com/rewplkbTPv
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) March 6, 2025
In an interview with Ynet last month, Tami Braslavski recounted the stories she’s heard of her son taking care of people amid the onslaught, when more than 5,000 Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, amid acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Rom “had a number of opportunities to get out of there that day,” his mother said, but “from 6:30 in the morning, until the moment he was kidnapped [between 2-4 p.m.], he was moving from place to place [helping people].”
“Some of them he rescued, some of them he encouraged, giving them the strength, the hope, the faith that they’d get out of there,” she said, adding that “dozens” of people had reached out to her with their own personal stories from that day.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 30 hostages and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives during a ceasefire between January and March. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war. In exchange, Israel has freed some 2,000 jailed Palestinian terrorists, security prisoners, and Gazan terror suspects detained during the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The body of another soldier killed in 2014 is still being held by Hamas, and is counted among the 59 hostages.
The Times of Israel Community.