Hostage’s dad to MKs: ‘Instead of having a toast on Rosh Hashanah, you will be drinking the blood of the hostages’

By Sam Sokol 3 September 2025, 2:51 pm

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Sam Sokol is a former political correspondent at The Times of Israel. He was previously a reporter for the Jerusalem Post, Jewish Telegraphic Agency and Haaretz. He is the author of "Putin’s Hybrid War and the Jews"

Ofir Braslavski, the father of hostage Rom Braslavski, who is held by Palestinian Islamic Jihad in Gaza, speaks at a Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee meeting at the Knesset in Jerusalem, September 3, 2025. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)

Addressing the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, the father of hostage Rom Braslavski screams at lawmakers that “instead of having a toast on Rosh Hashanah, you will be drinking the blood of the hostages.”

“You will drink their blood because they are dead,” yells Ofir Braslavski, asking MKs if any of them care that his son is “dying.”

“You all need to go home… My son is dying, does that interest any of you? This happened on your watch,” he declares.

In July, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad terror group published a video of Rom Braslavski, whom it is holding captive in the Gaza Strip. The terror group claimed that the six-minute video was recorded days before it lost contact with the captors holding Braslavski, and alleged that the hostage’s fate was unknown.

A still from the video published by Israeli media showed Braslavski, 21, looking pale and thin, lying on the ground in an unknown location in Gaza.

“They managed to break Rom. Even the most resilient person has their breaking point,” read a statement by his family released at the time.