He Four captives rescued by Israeli forces. in the Gaza Strip on Saturday had been kidnapped during a party in the desert near the border during the broad Hamas campaign. assault on Israel on October 7. One of them had become an icon of the agonizing hostage crisis that is still far from over.
Noa Argamani, 26, appeared in a series of videos that captured the painful journey of her plight.
In the first, filmed by the attackers, several men force her to get on a motorcycle after being kidnapped along with her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, whose whereabouts are still unknown. “Do not kill me!” she shouted, one arm outstretched and the other immobilized.
In another video released by Hamas in mid-January, she appeared emaciated and spoke – almost certainly under duress – of other hostages killed in airstrikes months after Israel’s massive offensive.
And then there was a third videoin which she appears in family photos in the background while her mother, a Chinese immigrant to Israel who has stage four brain cancer, pleads with her captors to release her only daughter so she can see her before she dies.
“I want to see her one more time. Talk to her one more time,” said Liora Argamani, 61. “I don’t have much time left in this world.”
On Saturday, after eight months of captivity, Israeli forces rescued Argamani and three men. All of them had been kidnapped at the Tribe of Nova music festival, where Hamas and other militants killed more than 350 people in The worst massacre in the history of Israel..
The rescue operation came amid a major Israeli air and ground offensive in central Gaza that has killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians, including at least 94 who died on Saturday.
Less is publicly known about the three other hostages who were rescued on Saturday.
Almog Meir Jan, 22, from a small town near Tel Aviv, had finished his military service three months earlier, according to the Times of Israel, an English-language Israeli website. A forum created by families of the hostages said he was supposed to start working at a technology company the day after the attack.
Andrey Kozlov, 27, worked as a security guard at the festival. He had immigrated to Israel alone a year and a half earlier, and his mother arrived in the country after October 7, Israeli media reported.
In a phone call with Israeli President Isaac Herzog after his release, Kozlov spoke a mix of English and Hebrew. He joked that his Hebrew had improved in captivity and said, “I had a lot of practice with my new friends,” referring to his fellow hostages.
Shlomi Ziv, 41, worked as a security guard and had gone to the party with two friends who were killed, the Times of Israel reported. The hostage families forum said Ziv and his wife, Miren, have lived in a farming community in northern Israel for the past 17 years.
The hostage families forum said Argamani, Meir Jan and Ziv had celebrated birthdays in captivity. When announcing their rescue, the army had initially indicated the age of the kidnapped people.
Argamani began dating Or about two years ago, after they met while attending Ben-Gurion University in his hometown of Beersheba and planned to move to Tel Aviv together, his mother told him. Israel’s Ynet news website. He said his son had majored in electrical engineering and had been hired by international technology giant Nvidia.
Argamani’s friend Yonatan Levi described her as an intelligent, free spirit who loved to party and travel and who studied computer science. He said that he had met her on a diving course in the Israeli city of Eilat, on the Red Sea, and that a few months before her kidnapping she had asked him for help arranging insurance claims for her care. her mother.
Hamas and other militants killed about 1,200 people in the October 7 attack and captured another 250 people, including men, women, children and older adults. More than 36,700 Palestinians have died since the start of the war. according to local health officialsthat do not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
More than 100 captives, mostly women and children, were freed in exchange for Palestinians imprisoned by Israel during a week-long ceasefire last year.
Talks about a similar deal to free the rest have dragged on for months, with Hamas insisting on an end to the war and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu promising “total victory.” US President Joe Biden is gathering global support behind a multi-phase ceasefire proposal that would release all hostages in exchange for an Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
Last month, Hamas released an audio recording, purportedly by Argamani, calling on Israelis to pressure the government to secure the return of the hostages through another deal.
Israeli authorities believe the militants are still holding around 120 hostages, of whom 43 have died. Survivors include about 15 women, two children under 5 years old and two men aged 80 years.
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