Tel-Chai Nation

Rom Braslavski, one of the freed hostages, says the Hamas captors told him to convert to Islam if he wanted food:

According to her son's testimony, which she revealed, Tami said Rom's captors abused him psychologically, told him that Iran bombed Israel, that his parents weren't at the protests in the square, and chose to show him specifically only the Kaplan protests, while lying to him that his parents forgot about him.

Not only that, his mother said his captors tried to convince him to fast during Ramadan or read chapters from the Quran and convert to Islam, in exchange for food and improved conditions, but he refused. As evidence of the mental crisis he experienced as a result of the psychological manipulations his captors operated on him, the mother recounts, "And now when he returned, he keeps saying all the time 'I'm Jewish.'"

"I didn't understand why he keeps saying 'I'm Jewish,' 'I'm a strong Jew.' It was so important to him to preserve his Jewish identity because they asked him to convert to Islam and tempted him, if you fast in Ramadan we'll give you food, soap, all kinds of things that for us are banal, but Rom didn't break, and however he came he put on tefillin, we brought him the tefillin to the hospital and he put them on."

Here's more info about this abominable case:

His captors weaponized food, turning starvation into a weapon to break his faith. “They asked him to convert to Islam and tempted him — if you fast during Ramadan we’ll give you food, soap, all kinds of things that for us are banal — but Rom didn’t break,” Tami said, adding that guards dangled extra rations and hygiene items if he would read from the Quran.

It's remarkable he held firm. But will this teach any left-wing Israelis why the Religion of Peace is a bad thing? Who knows? That's another serious issue that has to be raised, whether anybody in Israel is going to learn from this.

Update: here's more about the repulsive conditions in which the hostages were kept.

Labels: anti-semitism, dhimmitude, islam, Israel, jihad, military, misogyny, racism, sexual violence, terrorism, war on terror