Father recounts daughter's kidnapping by Hamas, urges release of hostages

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. (KABC) -- It's been one month since the start of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Earlier this week, family members of hostages and others who survived the attacks by Hamas gathered at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills to make an urgent plea to free the hundreds of people being held.

In attendance Tuesday night was Eitan Gonen, whose daughter Romi was attending the Nova music festival on Oct. 7 that saw hundreds of innocent civilians slaughtered.

Romi hid in a bush for hours before she thought she had been rescued by a friend. Instead, her friends were murdered and Romi was shot and kidnapped.

Gonen said he doesn't know if she's alive or dead.

"We heard the terrorist talk in Arabic on the phone," Gonen recalled. "And then everything was shut down."

Also in attendance that night was Ariel Ein-Gal, who survived several ambushes and attacks.

"For 30 minutes I'm just talking to myself and telling myself 'OK, this is where you die. You're gonna get shot, you're gonna die. But it's OK, your family's safe,'" he said. "Just convincing myself that it's OK that I'm gonna die."

He didn't die, but his best friend did. She was the only one of their group of 21 to be killed in the attack. He now wears a Holocaust style tattoo in her honor.

"People need to know the facts. What happened on this Black Sabbath, on Oct. 7, was horrific," Gonen said.

They say with civilian deaths mounting in Gaza, they fell like the world's attention is slipping away from their loved ones.

"We need help," Romi's stepmother Meital Waiss said. "We need you to help us bring Romi and all the others back home now."