She added, ‘No one came to give me medical help. Nobody. Until I was rescued.’
By Vered Weiss, World Israel News
At the G7 conference in Tokyo, Noa Argamani gave testimony to diplomats about her ordeal as a Hamas captive in Gaza.
She described to Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa her experience of being deprived of food and water and how she had to endure regular beatings.
Noa Argamani said, “They beat me all over my body.”
She added, “No one came to give me medical help. Nobody. Until I was rescued.”
She explained, “I lost a lot of weight. We drank less than half a liter of water a day, and there were days when we were not allowed to drink at all.”
Argamani also said that she used to lay awake at night wondering if she would be killed.
“Every night, I was falling asleep and thinking, this may be the last night of my life,” she said at the meeting in Tokyo, “Until the moment I was [rescued]… I just did not believe that I’m still surviving.”
“And in this moment that I’m still sitting with you, it’s a miracle that I’m here. It’s a miracle because I survived October 7th, and I survived this bombing, and I survived also the rescue,” she said.
Noa Argamani and three other hostages were rescued in Rafah by IDF troops during Operation Arnon, named after Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, who was killed during the rescue effort.
The other hostages freed during the raid were Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv.
She concluded, “Avinatan, my boyfriend, is still there, and we need to bring them back before it’s too late.”
One of the iconic videos of the October 7th atrocities repeatedly shown on television news broadcasts featured Noa Argamani placed on the back of a motorcycle crying and reaching out for her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, who terrorists were also taking away.
After Argamani was released, she visited her mother, Liora Argamani, who had terminal brain cancer and died shortly after.
Following her visit with her mother, Noa Argamani said, “As an only child to my parents and as a child to a mother with a terminal illness, my biggest worry during captivity was for my parents.”
“It’s a great privilege to be by my mother’s side after eight months of uncertainty. It’s a great privilege to see my parents surrounded by so many good people,” she said.