Weeks after her rescue, Noa Argamani calls for ‘love, not hate’ in Israeli society
Ex-hostage wants ‘everything possible’ done to free remaining captives, but doesn’t call for deal with Hamas, an option opposed by the family of her partner, hostage Avinatan Or
During her eight months in captivity in Gaza, Noa Argamani thought mostly about her parents, she said Saturday in her first public message since her rescue from the Strip three weeks ago.
She also called for love to prevail against hate in today’s fractured Israeli society, and advocated for “everything possible” to be done to bring home the remaining 120 hostages, in a video message broadcast during the weekly rally at Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.
“As my parents’ only child, and as the daughter of a mother with a terminal illness, the thing that preoccupied me the most during my captivity was my worry for my parents,” she said.
Argamani was rescued on June 8, along with three other hostages, in a daring daylight military operation in central Gaza by Israeli special forces. Her partner Avinatan Or, whom she was separated from during her abduction by terrorists at the Supernova music festival on October 7, remains in captivity.
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 Or was held back, became some of the most well-known footage of the October 7 terror onslaught.
Her plight attracted widespread attention due to both the footage of her abduction and the wish of her mother Liora, who has terminal brain cancer, to see her again before she dies.
Being back by her mother’s side, “after eight months of uncertainty, is a great privilege,” Argamani said in the video message. “It is a great privilege to see my parents surrounded by so many good people.”
Thanking the public for “making our voices were heard when we could not speak,” Argamani urged activists to continue fighting for the return of the remaining 120 hostages, dozens of whom are dead.
“Although I’m home now, we can’t forget about the hostages who are still in Hamas captivity, and we must do everything possible to bring them back home,” she said.
It is believed that 116 of the 251 hostages seized by Hamas on October 7 remain in captivity, after 105 civilians were released during a week-long truce in late November. Four were released prior to that, and seven, including Argamani, were rescued by Israeli forces. The bodies of 19 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the IDF.
The IDF has confirmed the deaths of 42 of those still held by Hamas, and one more person has been listed as missing since October 7, and their fate is still unknown. Hamas has also been 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.
Unlike several other returning hostages, Argamani stopped short of calling for the government to make a deal with Hamas for the hostages’ release. Or’s family belongs to the Tikva Forum, a group of hostage families who have been pushing for increased military pressure to free their loved ones, rather than for a ceasefire deal as advocated by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, which organizes the weekly rally in Tel Aviv.
In April, Or’s family asked that protesters stop using his image and name to call for a hostage deal and for early elections, charging that he was being used as a “political instrument.”
In her video statement, Argamani extended condolences to the family of Arnon Zmora, the police counter-terror operative killed during the rescue operation, thanking the “security forces and our army, the soldiers, the reservists, the special forces, and everyone who took part and risked their lives so that I could return home.”
She concluded her message with a wish for “quieter days that will be spent surrounded by family, friends and good people.”
“And above all,” she said, “may we know how to love and not to hate.”
