Islamic Jihad terror group claims it lost contact with fighters holding Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski after IDF's latest Gaza raids

On Tuesday evening, the Al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), claimed that it had lost contact with the members of its group holding Israeli hostage Rom Braslavski, after the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) had surrounded the area where he was being held. 

A message was posted to the Telegram account of spokesman Abu Hamza on Tuesday stating, “We announce that since yesterday, contact with the squad that guarded the abductee Rom Braslavski has been lost, after the enemy forces surrounded the area where the abductee is located. We don't know what happened to them so far.” 

The announcement came after IDF troops operated in the central Gaza city of Deir al-Balah earlier this week, when it had previously avoided operations there due to concern over the presence of hostages. 

Braslavski was taken hostage from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, and is believed to be among the twenty or so hostages still living. In April, PIJ released a video of Braslavski, in which he states that he has some kind of illness and speaks of his mother.

“Look at what is happening to my body – I am scratching all day and I am in pain all day. I don’t know what this illness is,” Braslavski says in the video. 

“I have no family, my mother sits at home, torn, crying all day, twenty-four hours. My October 7 has not ended, and it will never end in my life. It will not end.” 

The video is believed to have been scripted by his captors as part of a psychological warfare effort. The group has previously released false statements in the past in an attempt to influence the behavior of the Israeli government. 

Israeli officials said on Tuesday that Hamas was also ramping up its psychological warfare by raising new claims of famine, in an effort to exert maximum pressure as a new ceasefire deal is approaching completion.

Braslavski’s family released a statement of their own following the announcement by PIJ, demanding that the government provide them with accurate information on the situation. 

“No one knows where Rom is. Neither the IDF nor the Jihad knows anything. The only thing we knew was that he was being held alone,” the statement said.

“We demand a meeting with one of the senior officials – the Chief of Staff, the Minister of Defense, or the Prime Minister, who do not respond, answer or refer to messages from us and do not update or involve us as a family. Gal Hirsch is the only one who has responded and replied, but he does not have the answers and information to give us. No one is getting back to us. We are broken and in pain. We demand answers from our country regarding our beloved, Rom.” 

"We want to know where our son is," the family stated. "We want those responsible to sit down with us and reflect the situation to us, and not just provide pieces of information and pieces of truth." 

Rom’s family also referred to recent comments by Minister Orit Strock, of Religious Zionism, who said that the fighting in Gaza should be expanded even at risk to the hostages. 

"We heard what Minister Strock said,” the Braslavski family commented. “She has to put herself in our situation. When she feels what I, Tami, feel like a mother, she won't be able to talk like that.” 

During a radio interview on Monday, Minister Strock had said, "What needs to be done is to launch a decisive battle in all the areas of the Gaza Strip we have not yet entered.” 

“There is an entire area – defined by the Chief of Staff as roughly 25% of the territory – that has effectively been designated a ‘no-go zone’ because hostages are being held there,” she continued.

“We cannot win a war this way. It is neither logical nor reasonable.” 

“We must make every effort to avoid harming the hostages, but that may be an outcome,” she added. “When our communities are under fire or there are daily attempts to kidnap our soldiers, does that not endanger lives? I cannot calculate whose life is more valuable. If attempts to abduct soldiers continue from that area daily, does that not pose a danger?”

Strock’s comments were immediately condemned by the Hostage and Missing Families Forum as being insensitive to the hostage families. 

Democratic Party Chairman Yair Golan called on the government to agree to a ceasefire deal to release all the hostages, warning, “If we do not return the hostages, we may lose them forever.”