The Hamas captor told Noga Weiss, ‘Everyone will be released and you will stay in Gaza – you will marry me and bring me children.’
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
Freed hostage 18-year-old Noga Weiss recounts being reunited with her mother in captivity only so that both women could be pressured to agree to a marriage between Noga and her terrorist captor, a proposal the women bravely risked their lives to refuse.
Noga Weiss recounts her chilling account of captivity in Gaza to Channel 12, and said her captor presented her with a ring in the presence of her mother Shiri and said, “‘Everyone will be released and you will stay in Gaza – you will marry me and bring me children.”
She recalls having been abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th along with her mother, although for many of the 50 days as a hostage, she and her mother were separated.
Noga’s father, Ilan, joined Be’eri’s emergency team to get more weapons to defend the kibbutz against invading terrorists, but was killed on October 7th and his body was taken by Hamas to Gaza.
Noga remembers hiding in the bushes outside her home when she was captured by Hamas terrorists.
“There were more than forty terrorists around me, all of them pointing Kalashnikovs at me and at the bodies of people I know,” she said.
She added, “Then they put me in the car and we enter Gaza, crowds, children and adults shouting and cheering, putting their hands into the car to pull my hair. I didn’t understand why they didn’t just shoot me.”
When a window exploded above her due to an airstrike, she and other captives were moved.
“They constantly move us between places, put hijabs on our heads, and hold our hands as if we were married – to lest they be suspected,” Noga said.
In many cases, Noga and other hostages were forced to humor their captors and had to avoid saying anything that might anger them.
“I said I would do anything, even play cards with them so they wouldn’t shoot me,” she said,
“But their moods changed all the time, sometimes they played cards with us and laughed, but then if someone said a word out of place – one of them suddenly left the room and returned with gun,” she continued.
Noga emphasized that hostages had to constantly walk on eggshells to avoid danger.
“We didn’t know what would make them angry, the thought that is always in the mind is to please them in order to stay alive,” she said.
However, Noga also recalls her mother standing up to one of her captors, denying him permission to wed her daughter.
The forced proposal came suddenly when Noga was put into a room with what seemed to be an Arab woman.
“Suddenly an Arab woman with a hijab enters the house,” she said.
“It took me a while to realize that she was my mother. I didn’t know she was alive and she didn’t know I was alive,” she added.
However, the joy of being reunited with her mother was accompanied by a shocking proposal; the terrorist brought her mother there to agree to let him marry her 18-year-old Israeli daughter.
Noga recounts, “He said he wanted us to be united so that she would give him the approval, he actually brought a ring, and told me ‘Everyone will be released and you will stay in Gaza – you will marry me and bring me children. He asked my mother if she approved.”
She continued, “We tried to laugh a fake laugh so we wouldn’t get shot in the head.”
However, Shiri Weiss would have none of this kind of treatment, Noga says, “until my mother got mad at him and yelled at him and said she wasn’t ready.”
Although the women knew that taking a stand like this could have gotten them killed, the terrorist didn’t harm them, but Noga said for the rest of her captivity, she “felt risk in the air” from him constantly.
Noga said, “He brought a ring only on the 14th day, he stayed with us until the 50th day, and he continued to tell me that I would stay here with him in Gaza, even after everyone was released, And I will raise his children.”