27-year-old, accompanied by her father, makes remarks during Tokyo meeting with senior diplomats from G7 countries
By
ToI Staff and
AFP21 August 2024, 10:12 am
Israeli Noa Argamani, who was abducted with others from the Nova music festival during Hamas's October 7 attack on southern Israel that triggered the war, speaks during a meeting with G7 embassy representatives during a visit to Tokyo on August 21, 2024. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
Rescued Israeli hostage Noa Argamani, whose heart-wrenching hostage-taking video on October 7 made her emblematic of the 251 hostages seized by Hamas, said Wednesday in Japan that she thought every night in captivity would be her last.
“Every night I was falling asleep and thinking, this may be the last night of my life,” the 26-year-old said as she met with senior diplomats from G7 countries in Tokyo.
“And until the moment I was [rescued]… I just did not believe that I’m still surviving,” she added.
“And in this moment that I’m still sitting with you, it’s a miracle that I’m here,” she said.
“Avinatan, my boyfriend, is still there, and we need to bring them back before it’s going to be too late. We don’t want to lose more people than we already lost,” Argamani said.
Argamani was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival near Re’im on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed the Gaza border and invaded southern Israel, murdering some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages.
Footage of Argamani’s abduction, in which she was seen screaming as her Hamas captor drove her away on the back of a motorcycle while her boyfriend
Avinatan Or was held back, became some of the most famous footage of the October 7 terror onslaught.
Noa Argamani is seen being kidnapped by Hamas terrorists during the massacre at the Supernova desert rave in the south on October 7, 2023. (Screenshot used in accordance with clause 27a of the copyright law)
The viral video showed her on the back of a motorbike screaming: “Don’t kill me!”
She was rescued from Nuseirat in central Gaza by IDF forces after nine months of captivity in a daring daylight operation on June 8, along with hostages Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv.
In a post shared on Instagram on Sunday, Argamani reminisced about the times she had celebrated Tu B’Av with Or. The lesser-known Jewish holiday, sometimes referred to as the “Jewish Valentine’s Day,” fell this year on August 19.
“Every year, you would bring me a bouquet of flowers and tell me a nice story about what Tu B’Av is actually about,” she wrote. “How in the past, the girls would wear white and go out dancing in the vineyard in Shilo next to the full moon in order to find a groom.”
Since her rescue, Argamani has advocated publicly for the release of the remaining hostages, and in July accompanied Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his trip to Washington, DC, where she told him that the remaining hostages in Gaza “must be brought home as quickly as possible, before it is too late.”
Rescued hostage Noa Argamani, center, who was abducted with hundreds of others from the Supernova music festival during Hamas’s October 7 terror onslaught, attends a meeting with G7 embassy representatives during a visit to Tokyo, Japan on August 21, 2024. (Photo by Richard A. Brooks / AFP)
Noa Argamani was in Japan accompanied by her father. Argamani’s mother Liora, originally from China, was terminally ill with cancer during her daughter’s captivity, but was
able to meet with Noa immediately after her rescue, before
passing away three weeks later.
It is believed that 105 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 30 hostages have also been recovered.
On Tuesday, the IDF announced it had retrieved the bodies of six hostages from tunnels in southern Gaza, at least some of whom the military said were killed in Israeli military operations.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014.
:quality(70):focal(3122x2570:3132x2580)/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/liberation/CNHP34DACJDEPF7FMES43XYAOM.jpg)
www.liberation.fr
