Freed hostage Braslavski demands Israeli parliament resign over October 7 failures

Rom Braslavski used the floor of the Knesset to turn survivor testimony into a political indictment, telling lawmakers that after the failures of October 7 they should “take responsibility and get out of our lives.” The former hostage, who said he endured starvation, torture and sexual abuse during captivity, called on members of Israel’s parliament to resign after first approving a state commission of inquiry into the attack.

Braslavski spoke on Monday, May 11, 2026, at a protest outside the opening of the Knesset’s summer session. He said he had been held for 738 days after being abducted by Palestinian Islamic Jihad, placing him among the last hostages to return home after the Gaza war. His demand was sweeping, extending from the “extreme left to the extreme right,” and framed the question of accountability not as a routine parliamentary dispute but as a test of whether the political class could acknowledge its role in the failures that left Israelis dead and hostages in captivity.

The protest was organized by the October Council, a campaign group pushing for a state commission of inquiry into the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack. Members of the group, along with bereaved families and residents from the Gaza border area and northern Israel, gathered at the Knesset to press for answers on the war’s beginning, the handling of the hostage crisis and the broader breakdown in state protection. Their presence underscored how the demand for an inquiry has become a rallying point for families still seeking accountability from the government.

Braslavski’s testimony carried unusual force because it came from someone who had lived through the system’s failure at its most extreme. Earlier accounts said he described being whipped, starved, stripped naked, shackled and sexually assaulted in captivity. His mother, Tami Braslavski, later said captors repeatedly pressured him to convert to Islam in exchange for food. Those allegations have deepened public anger over the treatment of hostages and the conditions in which they were held.

For the government, the protest sharpened a debate that has shadowed Israel since October 7: who bears responsibility for the security collapse, who is accountable for the hostages, and whether the institutions that failed before the attack can still command public trust afterward. Braslavski’s appeal placed that debate in stark moral terms, not as a matter of procedure, but as a demand from a survivor that the people in power step aside.