Freed Israeli hostage Noa Argamani has revealed how every night in Hamas captivity she went to sleep thinking it was ‘going to be my last night alive’.
For the first time since being rescued, Noa has spoken about her experience in captivity, as she met with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa on Thursday.
The 26-year-old made global headlines when she was filmed on the back of a motorcycle being dragged into Gaza during Hamas’ incursion into Israel last October.
She spent 245 days in captivity before being rescued in a dramatic sweep through a building ostensibly in the Nuseirat, Gaza Strip, on June 8.
Speaking yesterday she said: ‘It’s a miracle that I’m here. Every night I was falling asleep and thinking this might be my last night alive.
‘My head was cut and I was being hit all over my body. Nobody came to visit me. Nobody came to see me. Nobody came to give me medicine. Nobody, until I got rescued. It’s a warzone.’
She stepped up calls for the release of her boyfriend Avinatan Or and the remaining 115 hostages, saying ‘we need to bring them back before it’s too late’.
Noa Argamani speaking about her experience today as she met with Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa
Noa Argamani stepped up calls for the return of her boyfriend Avinatan Or (pictured) and the remaining 115 hostages
Earlier this month she revealed how she ‘fought until the last moment’ to remain ‘side by side’ with the love of her life that day. ‘I still can’t grasp the fact that now I’m here and you, my beloved, are still there, living every day in endless fear,’ she said.
Noa became the face of the attack on October 7 after a powerful Mail on Sunday front page captured those final seconds as she reached out to Avinatan while screaming at her captors: ‘Don’t kill me!’
Her mother, who had stage four cancer, feared she would not live long enough to see her daughter again, and pleaded with Hamas to free her and the Israeli and US governments to bring her home.
After at last being reunited with her in June, Liora ‘spent her final days alongside her daughter Noa, who returned from captivity, and her close family,’ the hospital where she was being treated said in a statement as it announced her death.
Israeli troops rescued Noa and three other hostages after 245 days in the Gaza Strip in the largest and most successful rescue operation of the war on June 8.
Noa Argamani was taken into Gaza from the Nova Music Festival on October 7
Noa was seen being directed by her rescuers to a car before being pulled out of Gaza in a military helicopter and returned safely to a hospital in Ramat Gan
Noa was seen being directed by her rescuers to a car before being pulled out of Gaza in a military helicopter and returned safely to a hospital in Ramat Gan, Israel.
Three commandos from Yamam, Israel’s national counter-terrorism unit, involved in the rescue revealed that the first thing Noa did upon being rescued was ask about her mother.
In an interview with Israeli magazine Walla, one of the commandos said: ‘Her first question was whether her mother was still alive. I told her yes.
‘She looked right and left at us and asked again if we were sure. We told her yes, ‘that’s why we came, to bring you back to your mother.”
Despite the unfathomable trauma of having spent 245 days in captivity before losing her mother to brain cancer last month, Noa is using all her strength to fight for the release of Avinatan and the other hostages.
She recently travelled to Washington DC with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu to put pressure on politicians to work on reaching a deal.