Arab-Israeli TV anchor sacked for mocking freed hostage

‘Her eyebrows look better than mine! Her skin! The hair! The nails! For this innocent children and women had to be killed?’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Arab-Israeli actress and television news anchor Lama Tatour was fired by an Israeli television station after she mocked freed hostage Noa Argamani on Instagram.

The host of an Arabic language program, “Perspective,” Tatour posted on Instagram after the 26-year-old Argamani and three other hostages were freed in an IDF operation, “This is how a hostage looks after 9 months of captivity?”

She added, “Her eyebrows look better than mine! Her skin! The hair! The nails! For this innocent children and women had to be killed?”

Khaled Natour, producer of the television show Tatour hosted, reprimanded her following the post.

“You can’t write something like that; it’s a happy day for the State of Israel,” he said.

Tatour tried to justify the post and claimed Israelis said similar things after seeing photographs of the female hostage who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival on October 7th.

Shortly after, Keshet announced that Tatour had been dismissed and issued a statement condemning her comments.

“We strongly condemn the statements made by actress Lama Tatour today on social media.”

Natour also released a statement saying,”Tatour’s words are unacceptable, and therefore, her work on the program has been immediately terminated.”

Tatour has not commented on whether she regrets her post, and her Instagram account is listed as private.

The IDF on Saturday rescued four hostages from two separate buildings in Nuseirat in the central Gaza Strip.

IDF spokesman Daniel Hagari described the daytime mission, “During the operation, we struck… threats to our forces in the area. These threats were struck from the land, air, and sea… in order for us to rescue the hostages,” he says.

The forces rescued: Noa Argamani, 26, Almog Meir Jan, 21, Andrey Kozlov, 27, and Shlomi Ziv, 40.

A fighter from the Border Police’s Yamam National Counter-Terrorism Unit was mortally wounded during the rescue mission.

Ch. Insp. Arnon Zamora was rushed to the hospital after being injured during the operation and was pronounced dead soon after.