They were able to be reunited in extremis. The mother of Noa Argamani, an Israeli hostage captured on October 7 by Hamas and released earlier this month, succumbed to cancer that she had been battling for several years. Her daughter was able to visit her bedside after her return from captivity in the Gaza Strip, thus enjoying a few precious days at her side before she passed away.
“We are devastated to announce that Liora Argamani, the mother of freed hostage Noa Argamani, has passed away after an intense battle with cancer,” the official Israeli state account posted on X, along with a photo of the mother and daughter smiling. “Our hearts are with Noa and Yaakov Argamani,” the young woman’s father, the message added. “May Liora’s memory be a blessing.”
The 61-year-old Chinese-Israeli woman was in the terminal stages of brain cancer, which she had been battling for more than three years, according to Israeli media. “Liora spent her final days with her daughter Noa, who returned from captivity, and with her close family,” the Sourasky Medical Center in Tel Aviv, where she was hospitalized, said in a statement, quoted by Kan, the Israeli public service channel. “The family has asked for their privacy during this difficult time,” the hospital added, according to The Jerusalem Post.
“Is my mother alive?”
Despite the illness, which had weakened her considerably, Liora Argamani had fought during the eight months of captivity of her 26-year-old daughter to ask for her return, fearing that she would die before she could see her again. She went so far as to write letters herself to US President Joe Biden to implore his help.
“I don’t know how much time I have left and I wish I had the chance to see my Noa again, at home,” she said in a video to her daughter on November 30, when the first hostages were freed during a ceasefire between Hamas and Israel. “If I don’t have the chance to see you again, know that I love you very much and that we did everything we could to get you free. The whole world loves you.”
Noa Argamani became one of the faces of Hamas’s bloody attack on Israel on October 7, after she was filmed crying and begging a group of men kidnapping her on a motorbike to spare her life while she was attending the Nova electronic music festival. She was freed along with four other hostages on June 8 by the Israeli army in a “difficult special daytime operation in Nusseirat” in the central Gaza Strip.
Her first words were “Is my mother alive?” according to soldiers from the unit that rescued her, quoted by Kan media. Hours later, she was able to visit Liora Argamani, whose health had deteriorated significantly during her daughter’s detention. It had become “complicated and difficult,” Ronni Gamzu, the hospital’s director general, told Reuters when the hostage was released. “For eight months, we have been trying to keep her in a state where she can communicate,” he said.
VideoGaza: Israeli army announces release of four hostages alive
Noa Argamani spoke for the first time since her captivity last Saturday. “As an only child and the child of a mother with a terminal illness, my greatest worry in captivity was for my parents. It is a great privilege to be by my mother’s side after eight months of uncertainty,” she said.
She also called for the return of some 120 people still detained in the Gaza Strip. Her boyfriend Avinatan, a 30-year-old engineer, is still held by Hamas in the Palestinian enclave. “Although I am home now, it is impossible to forget those who are not yet home,” the young woman said.
