Romi Gonen is set to come home on Sunday, 470 days since she was abducted from the Nova music festival in the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre. Her brother said in an Instagram post that she was named among the three first hostages to be freed in the cease-fire and hostage release deal.
Romi was on the phone with her mother all morning on October 7m 2023, and at 10:15 a.m. said she had been shot. In a chilling recording of the call her mother said: “Romi I am with you my love. Everything will be OK.” But then the terrorists were heard speaking in Arabic and the call ended.
Her mother, Meirav Leshem Gonen, who has become one of the symbols of the struggle to release the hostages, did not stop fighting for her daughter and the rest of the hostages, meeting world leaders, government ministers and international organizations pleading for more to be done to bring her Romi home.
In June, Leshem Gonen spoke to the UN Human Rights Council’s Commission of Inquiry against Israel. “When women’s bodies are used as political tools, when their dignity is set aside because they are not on the ‘right side,’ it is a badge of shame for us all,” she told the council.
2 View gallery
Meirav Leshem Gonen speaks to the UN Human Rights Council
-(Photo: Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations in Geneva)
Meirav Leshem Gonen speaks to the UN Human Rights Council
(Permanent Mission of Israel to the United Nations in Geneva)
Romi turned 24 in captivity. Her brother Shahaf said in a post on Instagram that the family believes she would return home. Later, her father Eitan said he hoped U.S. president-elect Donald Trump will bring change and, in fact, it was the pressure from Trump that led to the deal that was signed last week.
“Over the past year we have been looking reality in the eyes. We no longer try to cover it up, to shade it for our comfort and we understand we must all deal with the inescapable truth. Our eyes seek any scrap of information, any thought, any possible way, to bring them all back, today, yesterday, last year,” Leshem Gonen wrote in an editorial earlier this month.
“Our eyes in the mirror, what do they show? Do they show us that we are doing everything we can? Do they show us we’ve given up? What do they really tell us? When we get up in the morning and look into the mirror, I ask all of us to look deep into our hearts, into our thoughts, into our souls and tell ourselves daily that we are really where we are.”
