“I am so happy to be here,” said a smiling Noa Argamani after her release in a first telephone conversation with Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog. “Thank you for everything. Thank you for this moment.”
It was a moving moment for all of Israel when the army (IDF) announced the release of four hostages held in Gaza on Saturday. Hardly any case has moved the country more in recent months than that of Noa Argamani. The 25-year-old was kidnapped from the Nova music festival and taken to Gaza on a motorcycle.
Noa’s mother, Liora Argamani from China, suffers from a brain tumor and has repeatedly pleaded with the Palestinian kidnappers in recent months to release her daughter so that she can see her one more time before she dies. But all appeals to the terrorists and to the US and Chinese governments to work for Noa’s release have been in vain.
The young woman and three other hostages have now been freed – in a commando operation that the Israeli military’s press spokesman, Daniel Hagari, described as “highly risky” and “complex”. In addition to Argamani, Almog Meir Jan (21), Andrey Kozlov (27) and 40-year-old Schlomi Ziv were also freed. All four had been kidnapped from the music festival.
According to Defense Minister Joav Gallant, it was a joint operation between the IDF, the domestic intelligence service Shin Bet and special forces. According to police, a member of the Yamam anti-terror unit was killed in the operation.
The forces “came under fire” both on their way to and into the buildings where the hostages were being held, Hagari said, as well as during their retreat after the rescue. “During the operation, we attacked targets in the region from land, air and sea that posed a threat to our forces in order to enable us to free the hostages.”
In fact, heavy air strikes had previously been reported from the region around Nuseirat in central Gaza, where the hostages had been held in two different locations, according to the Israeli army. Hamas deliberately held them in the midst of the Palestinian civilian population, said Hagari. According to the terrorist organization, 50 people were killed in the rescue operation.
However, critics and data experts regularly consider the casualty figures reported by Hamas to be unreliable. Even UN organizations that had adopted these figures in the past have now drastically revised their estimates downwards.
Meanwhile, video footage has been released showing Noa’s reunion with her father Yaakov on the journey to Tel Hashomer, a district of Ramat Gan where the Sheba Hospital is located, where the hostages’ health is checked. Noa was released exactly on her father’s birthday.
It is unclear how far her mother’s illness has progressed; she appeared very frail in her last public appearances. She was not seen in the pictures showing Noa meeting family members in the hospital.
The daring rescue operation, which sparked great joy in Israel, is likely to take some of the pressure off Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He has been repeatedly sharply criticized by the hostages’ relatives in recent weeks because, in their opinion, he did not do enough to get them released through political means.
Now, however, the relatives’ organization praised the “heroic operation” in Gaza. But also stated: “Now, with the enormous joy all over Israel, the Israeli government must remember its obligation to bring back all 120 hostages still held by Hamas – the living ones to provide them with rehabilitation measures and the dead to bury them.” In recent weeks, the army has discovered several Hamas hideouts from which the bodies of dead hostages have been recovered.
The major crisis for Prime Minister Netanyahu seems to have been averted for the time being. Opposition leader Benny Gantz, who joined the war cabinet after the massacre on October 7, canceled a press conference originally scheduled for Saturday evening after the hostage release.
It had been expected that Gantz would announce his withdrawal from the war cabinet because Netanyahu had still not presented a plan for the future of Gaza. However, the opposition leader has apparently postponed this plan for the time being because of the hostage release.