Just over three weeks after hostage Noa Argamani, 26, was rescued from captivity in the Gaza Strip, her terminally ill mother, Liora, has died, Israeli sources said on Tuesday.
The cause of death was cancer, according to the Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv and the Forum for Hostages and Missing Families, which was created after hundreds of people were kidnapped in last October’s attack on southern Israel by Hamas gunmen. .
Liora Argamani, who would have been 61 at the time of her death, made a series of emotional videos appealing to her daughter’s captors to allow her to see her again before she died.
In June, Israeli special forces rescued Noa and three other hostages from the hands of the Islamic militia.
Writing in X, Benny Gantzuntil recently a member of the now-disbanded war cabinet, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed their condolences to Noa and her father.
The fate of the young Israeli girl, who was kidnapped at the Nova music festival, has deeply touched people in Israel and around the world.
Images of her being kidnapped by terrorists on a motorcycle and crying desperately became a symbol of the plight of the hostages captured on October 7. Her boyfriend, who was also kidnapped, is still detained in Gaza.
At a demonstration against the Israeli government over the weekend, Noa Argamani made her first public appeal against hate since her release.
“I wish that we all have more peaceful, calmer days, surrounded by family, friends and good people,” she said in the message broadcast in Tel Aviv on Saturday night. “The most important thing is that we learn to love and not hate.”
