Hours after being rescued from an eight-month captivity in Gaza, Noa Argamani arrived at a Tel Aviv hospital to see her terminally ill mother.
Argamani, 26, was one of the best-known faces among the hostages kidnapped by Hamas on October 7. The shocking images of her being transported to Gaza on a motorcycle, pleading for her life and desperately reaching out to her boyfriend, who was marching alongside her on foot, went around the world.
Argamani’s boyfriend, Avinatan Or, remains captive.
Argamani was rescued on Saturday, along with three other hostages, in an Israeli special forces operation in an apartment building in central Gaza.
“I am very happy to be here,” she said in a phone call with the president of Israel upon her return, smiling and surrounded by friends and family.
She was later greeted with cheers upon her arrival at Tel Aviv’s Sourasky Medical Center, where her mother, Liora, is being treated for terminal cancer.
In October, shortly after her daughter was kidnapped at a music festival in southern Israel, Liora, sitting in a wheelchair, was asked in an interview with a local television station how she envisioned their reunion. “I hope I can at least hug her,” the woman responded at that moment.
The hospital’s general director, Ronni Gamzu, declared that the woman’s condition was “complicated and difficult.” She said Argamani was able to communicate with her mother, who they believe understood that her daughter had returned home.
“For the last eight months we have been trying to keep her in a state where she can communicate,” he said.
Argamani’s father, Yaakov, saw her after a military helicopter transported her back to Israel. “Today is my birthday, and a gift like this I never thought he would receive,” she said.
More than 360 people were killed during the massacre at the Nova dance festival, and another 40 were taken hostage by Hamas, according to Israeli counts.
