Robby Berman, American Israeli tour guide and journalist, made aliyah from Woodmere, N.Y. in 1989, and is currently based in Tel Aviv. On that fateful morning of October 7, he was awakened by the screech of sirens at 6:30 a.m. and ran into his safe room moments before a missile hit Tel Aviv. One of the tragedies that touched Berman personally was when he found out that his friend’s son died a hero fighting to defend Israel.
Berman told The Jewish Press, “He was an officer in the army – special forces. He was home for chag, got the call, drove down south, put together a unit of soldiers, stormed a house, killed a terrorist, but they also killed him.”
To date, 1,400 Israelis have been killed in the Hamas terrorist attacks, and some 199 are being held hostage in Gaza. Berman called the attacks “a wake-up call that good has to fight evil.” Feeling compelled to do something, Berman looked through his rolodex and proposed the idea of offering a financial reward to any Palestinian in Gaza who helps to free an Israeli hostage to some of his contacts, who were very receptive.
“I got commitment from a lot of high net worth individuals,” Berman explained, “As soon as we get one hostage that’s freed, and a Palestinian that claims that he helped free him, we’ll check into the facts and then give him a million shekels.”
Berman has recently made television appearances worldwide on channels such as Fox News, BBC, Russian TV, and Arutz Shtaim, Arutz Achat, and I24 in Israel to discuss his proposal. He also made a short TikTok video about it in Arabic, which he is “pushing in Arabic media, in the hope that people in Gaza who still have working phones can see my offer for a million shekels.”
Considering himself “left of center,” Berman described how he’s been fighting for both Jewish and Palestinian rights, and that the Hamas terrorist attacks “have nothing to do with the West Bank… they want to destroy Israel…kill the Jews, and they want the whole thing from the sea to the river…This is about pure evil.”
He added, “I just published a post on social media today saying ‘never again’ has returned again…These guys are slaughtering, raping, beheading, burning alive children…They’re saying this is self-defense…You don’t defend yourselves by killing women and children and octogenarians who have dementia….It was an act of terror.”
Berman can be contacted at [email protected].
