Romi Gonen: Released After 471 Days — Testimony on Captivity and Abuse from Nova Festival

Romi Gonen was 23 years old and attending the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re'im when the Hamas attack began on October 7, 2023. She was one of 251 people taken hostage on October 7 (about 40 of them from the Nova festival area) and brought into Gaza.

On January 19, 2025, in the first phase of the Gaza ceasefire agreement, Romi Gonen was released along with Emily Damari (a British-Israeli citizen taken from her home) and Doron Steinbrecher. Their release was broadcast live. All three emerged visibly thin but ambulatory.

Romi had been in Hamas captivity for 471 days.

Romi Gonen gave interviews and testimony after her release. Key elements:

• She was moved between multiple locations during her captivity — tunnels, private homes, and other structures.
• Her captors were aware of detailed personal information about her — social media, family background, connections — which she experienced as psychologically threatening.
• She later publicly described being sexually assaulted by her captors (i24NEWS).
• She was kept without consistent information about negotiations or about other hostages.
• The conditions deteriorated over time as the war continued.

Romi Gonen's case illustrates the demographic range of the October 7 hostage-taking: she was a young civilian with no military connection, attending a music festival, who spent 499 days as a Hamas prisoner. Her testimony — like that of Eli Sharabi and other released hostages — is part of the formal evidentiary record being compiled by Israeli authorities, international human rights organizations, and UN investigators.