The newly-freed hostage said she was almost lynched by Gazan civilians and killed in an Israeli airstrike, besides escaping death on the days she was captured and rescued.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

Rescued hostage Noa Argamani said she had four brushes with death from the day she was captured and through her eight months of captivity in the Gaza Strip, Channel 13 reported Sunday.

The first was on October 7th, when hundreds of the thousands of Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel turned the Nova dance festival into an arena of death, murdering more than 360 revelers and taking dozens hostage.

Taken from Hamas’ own footage of the event, Argamani’s picture was flashed around the world being hauled off to Gaza, screaming, on the back of a motorcycle driven by a terrorist.

She told her family that she was sure at that moment that she was going to die.

Then, when they reached Gaza, the motorcycle was surrounded by a mob of Palestinian civilians, and she believed that they were going to lynch her on the spot.

It took three months for another sign of life from her to appear. In January, Hamas made a propaganda video in which Argamani was featured along with two other hostages, Itai Svirsky and Yossi Sharabi.

Argamani was forced to make a subsequent video in which she said that the men had died in an Israeli airstrike that had buried all three of them under an avalanche of rubble. Sharabi died immediately, but Hamas terrorists dug her and Svirsky out, she said, sounding as if she was reading from a script.

The IDF later confirmed both men’s fate, admitting responsibility for Sharabi’s accidental death but saying that Hamas terrorists had murdered Svirsky.

She now told her family that “I saw the missile entering the house. I was sure that I was going to die. After it hit, I thought, ‘That’s it,’ but then I realized that I was still alive.”

The fourth time she faced her mortality head on was during the Saturday rescue, when a team from the elite Yamam anti-terrorist police unit burst into the apartment in which she was being held and rushed her away under heavy fire, along with three other hostages who had been held in a building some 200 meters away.

Argamani told her loved ones that she had always been kept above ground rather than in one of Hamas’ dark, fetid tunnels, the fate that Israelis fear most of the hostages are undergoing.

When she was moved from time to time from one apartment to another, or was allowed outside briefly to breathe some air, she said they disguised her in the long robes that are the standard attire of Gazan women.

Another detail she added was that her civilian captors allowed her to shower, albeit only at long intervals.

On a somewhat happier note, Argamani, who is extremely close with her father, said, “I prayed every day that I would be freed before Dad’s birthday,” and that is exactly the day she was reunited with him in Israel.

She also went immediately to visit her mother, Liora, who had begged the world to help get her daughter released before she died of brain cancer, and is now hospitalized in the final stage of her disease.

Although she could not communicate with her daughter, the director of Ichilov Hospital where Liora is being cared for, Prof. Roni Gamzu, told Ynet that the medical staff “estimate that yes, Liora understands the situation and Noa’s return.”

The post ‘I was nearly killed four times in Gaza,’ says freed captive appeared first on World Israel News.

Elite forces disguised as Arabs, a fierce firefight and an escape via rescue helicopters under air force jets’ cover fire were all part of the operation that lasted under two hours.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The nitty-gritty details of the IDF’s rescue of four hostages Saturday from deep inside the Gaza Strip included elite forces disguised as Arabs, a fierce firefight, and a hair-raising escape via rescue helicopters, Ynet reported Sunday.

The green light for the mission was flashed by the war cabinet on Thursday night, after the Yamam counter-terrorist unit of the Israeli Police underwent weeks of intensive training, with constant intelligence updates keeping track of the hostages’ whereabouts.

Conditions aligned correctly for the operation Saturday morning at 10 a.m. Two Yamam groups dressed as Arabs made their way carefully to two small apartment buildings in the Nuseirat refugee camp near the Gazan coast.

Noa Argamani was being held in one building, while Almog Meir Jan, Shlomi Ziv and Andrey Kozlov were together in another one 200 meters away.

At 10:50, live video coverage of the area was sent to the Shabak and army command centers, where Shabak head Ronen Bar and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi were overseeing the operation. Ten minutes later, the two personally gave the command to go ahead.

Between 11-11:10, the two teams rushed the apartments, and Argamani was whisked away quickly.

Trouble developed in the other rescue, as hundreds of Hamas terrorists responded to the Yamam force with heavy machine gun fire and the launching of RPGs over the next few minutes as the Israelis began their escape.

While the Israeli troops transmitted over the radio at 11:15 that “The diamonds are in our hands,” referring to the safe extraction of all four hostages, the rescue of the three male abductees was far from complete.

Chief Inspector Arnon Zamora, a senior Yamam commander, was hit during the firefight and badly injured, and the vehicle the Israelis were using to flee was hit by heavy fire and got stuck.

At 11:25, in a prearranged “Plan B,” navy vessels offshore and air force fighter planes and helicopters overhead started firing missiles at the Hamas forces while hundreds of soldiers from the 7th Armored, Paratroopers, Givati and Kfir Brigades stormed into the battle zone on foot and in tanks and APCs.

Within five minutes, the forces, working smoothly together, opened a safe route for the rescuers, who rushed together with the hostages into two Sikorsky helicopters that landed on the beach.

They were protected by the jets’ cover fire that hit pursuing terrorists who were just a few dozen yards away.

At 11:50, the helicopters took off for Israeli hospitals, where Zamora was unfortunately declared dead from his severe wounds.

The mission, which was originally called Summer Seeds, was immediately renamed Operation Arnon in his honor.

The post ‘The Diamonds Are In Our Hands’ – Details of daring hostage liberation revealed appeared first on World Israel News.

The temporary dock began operating again Saturday morning but was only used for delivering humanitarian aid, the American army said.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

The U.S. army denied Hamas reports Sunday that its newly repaired pier off the Gaza coast was used in any way to help Israel rescue four hostages the previous day, although the Americans did reportedly provide intelligence assistance.

“The humanitarian pier facility, including its equipment, personnel, and assets were not used in the operation to rescue hostages today in Gaza,” the U.S. Central Command announced on X. “An area south of the facility was used by the Israelis to safely return the hostages to Israel. Any such claim to the contrary is false.”

In video clips shared widely online, an Israeli Blackhawk helicopter, which is manufactured in the U.S., can be seen taking off from the beach with the pier in the background.

The rescue force used two helicopters to deliver Noa Argamani, Almog Meir, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv to Israel from Hamas captivity in the Nuseirat refugee camp.

Other helicopters were used in airstrikes to support the elite units while they performed the high-risk, daytime extraction.

In a separate post, CENTCOM said that on Saturday it delivered 492 metric tons of assistance, which “is entirely humanitarian in nature.” It also emphasized that “No U.S. military personnel went ashore in Gaza.”

Two American officials told CBS News Saturday that the U.S. had helped Israel prepare for the rescue by facilitating in the intelligence sphere, although they refused to go into any details.

According to IDF Chief Spokesman Daniel Hagari, the Israeli forces had been “preparing for this rescue operation for weeks.”

Its execution was delayed several times, with the need for better intelligence regarding the hostages’ exact location reportedly among other reasons for putting it off.

After their release, the hostages said they had been moved several times during their exactly eight months of captivity, having been kidnapped from the Nova dance festival during Hamas’ brutal invasion on October 7, in which its forces and other terrorists murdered 1,200 and took a total of 253 hostage.

There are still 120 hostages in Hamas hands, at least a third of whom are believed to be dead.

The IDF said some 90 Gazans were killed in the operation, which involved a prolonged fire fight with Hamas forces in and around the two civilian apartment buildings in which the four Israelis were being held. The army did not put a figure as yet on the number of noncombatants who may have been killed in the crossfire.

Hamas claimed that about 200 people were killed, but as per their usual statistics, did not differentiate between non-combatant and combatants.

Vice President Kamala Harris was careful to acknowledge the suffering of the Palestinians at a Democratic Party dinner Saturday in Michigan, a swing state with a large Muslim population in which many are angry at the Biden administration’s support of Israel.

“Before I begin, I’ll just say a few words about the morning which I know weighs heavily on all of our hearts,” she said.

“On October seventh, Hamas committed a brutal massacre of 1,200 innocent people and abducted 250 hostages,” she said. “Thankfully four of those hostages were reunited with their families tonight. And we mourn all of the innocent lives that have been lost in Gaza, including those tragically killed today.”

She then reiterated the president’s statement last week that “it is time for this war to end.”

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Dr. Mordechai Kedar’s review also showed they fear a full IDF incursion into Rafah.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

While the rescue Sunday night of two Israeli hostages from an apartment building in Rafah in southern Gaza made headlines all over the world, the Arab press mostly ignored that aspect of the pinpoint raid, focusing instead on Hamas’ casualty count as if those the IDF killed in the operation were non-combatants instead of armed fighters.

Speaking to Channel 14 News Monday, Arab culture expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar said that very little mention was made of the IDF success in liberating Fernando Marman and Louis Har from over four months in Hamas captivity.

Instead, he said, “Jihadist” media sites and channels such as Qatar-funded Al Jazeera talked of “63 dead” in the IDF operation as if “all of them were civilians. The Hamas men were civilians too, because they don’t wear uniforms.”

“This is the crazy thing in the Arab rhetoric that is so anti-Israel, [saying,] ‘You are fighting against civilians.’ The fact that these ‘civilians’ have RPGs, machine guns, Kalachnikovs, is not important,” he noted, adding that in contrast, all Israelis are called ‘soldiers.’

During the IDF operation, the many Hamas forces who were in and around the building where the hostages were found fiercely engaged the Israeli troops. The elite IDF teams on the ground shot back, with support from heavy fire both from the air and the sea so the rescuers could bring the two hostages to the safety of a nearby helicopter, to be taken back to Israel.

Rafah is the only city left in the Gaza Strip where there are significant numbers of Hamas combatants. The IDF estimates that there are four intact battalions there of the original 24 that the terrorist organization fielded. (Eighteen battalions have been “shattered,” according to a press briefing given Monday by government spokesman Eylon Levy, while two others are “on their last legs in Khan Younis.”)

Rafah is also very close to the Egyptian border, and holds over a million Gazans whom the IDF told to go south so they would not be caught in the war, which began at the northern end of the Strip. Egypt fears a mass influx of Gazans overrunning their heavily guarded walls if Israel attacks this last stronghold as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has vowed to do.   Al Arabiya reported Monday that Cairo has threatened to downgrade its relationship with Israel to merely “security ties” if the IDF goes full force into Rafah.

According to Kedar, the Arab media supporters of Hamas greatly fear such an incursion.

“Al Jazeera spent long minutes right before this interview,” he said, “presenting bits and pieces from Israeli media – Channels 11, 12, 13 – translate[d] into Arabic, how analysts and news presenters and everyone who appears there says how Israel shouldn’t enter Rafah. The entire purpose is to show how the Israelis are afraid, and don’t want, and are being forbidden by all sorts of instructions coming from Washington and other places from going into Rafah.”

The U.S., Great Britain and other Israeli allies are putting heavy pressure on Israel not to carry out a major military operation in the town due to the resulting danger to its large numbers of civilians.  While Jerusalem has said it will not act until a way has been found to vacate them safely, Levy made an “urgent appeal to the international community” at his briefing to help protect the civilians “from the Hamas terrorists who are trying to use them as human shields.”

“Cooperate with Israel!” he requested. “Don’t say it can’t be done, work with us to find a way.”

To Kedar, the Al Jazeera report shows “how afraid they are of an operation in Rafah … and in my estimation, just because they’re afraid, just because they don’t want it, Israel must go forward and take action in order to destroy Hamas and free the hostages.”

In the longtime Arab expert’s personal opinion, “Israel must, must, must destroy Hamas’ military capability,” as well as its civilian power.   If not, “a Hamas state will rearm in the future and do the same thing,” referring to its October 7, 2023 surprise invasion of Israel, when the terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people, including the elderly and infants, and abducted 253 back to the Gaza Strip.

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The building now reduced to ruins was hit with airstrikes as a joint IDF operation successfully rescued two elderly hostages.

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