Rescued Israeli hostage Noa Argamani gave her most detailed account of her harrowing months as a Hamas hostage in the Gaza Strip this week – recalling how she often was deprived water and practiced “mindfulness” by remembering her scuba diving adventures in happier times.
“Every night I was falling asleep and thinking, this may be the last night of my life,” Argamani, 26, who was kidnapped from the Supernova music festival during the deadly Oct. 7 attack in southern Israel, told a room full of G7 embassy representatives in Tokyo on Wednesday, per the AFP.
The software engineering student spent eight months in captivity in the Gaza Strip, where she was moved around frequently and was unable to shower more than twice a month.
Food and water were also very scarce, Argamani told the G7 members.
“I lost a lot of weight. We drank something like less than a half liter for a day, and there were days that we [were not allowed] to drink at all,” she noted.
She preserved through the hellish time by focusing on “mindfulness” and memories of happier times.
“[Things like] scuba diving, everything that I liked to do in my free time before, it really helped me to get to just release, to know that if today I’m okay, I don’t need to worry about the future,” she said.
“And until the moment I was [rescued]…I just did not believe that I’m still surviving,” she added.
Argamani’s plight made international headlines after a video of the young woman being dragged onto the back of a motorbike while begging “Don’t kill me!” surfaced shortly after the attacks, and became emblematic of the terrorists’ brutality.
Argamani and three other and three other hostages were finally rescued during a high-stakes raid on Gaza’s Nuseirat refugee camp on June 8.
She returned home just in time to reunite with her mother, who died from brain cancer in July.
Speaking in Tokyo on Wednesday, Argamani described her survival in Gaza as a “miracle.”
“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 7, and I survived this bombing, and I survived also the rescue,” she noted, referring to Israel’s counteroffensive in the Gaza Strip and the risky rescue mission.
She also pressed the world leaders to secure the release of the 109 remaining hostages – including her boyfriend, Avinatan Or.
Or, 30, was also taken from the Supernova festival. Video footage captures him being led away separately from Argamani.
“Avinatan, my boyfriend, is still there, and we need to bring them back before it’s going to be too late,” Argamani said Wednesday.
“We don’t want to lose more people than we already lost,” she insisted.
Argamani does not believe Or knows that she has been rescued and is waiting for him.
“I just want to say that he should take care of himself, and I am waiting for him at home and doing as much as I can to bring him home to his family. And to me also,” she said.
Argamani’s impassioned comments came as mediated ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas continued to stall out.
The hostages and the war in Gaza has been one of the issues on the forefront of the Democratic National Convention, where Sen. Bernie Sanders called for an end of the “horrific war” that has dragged on for nearly a year.
A 30-foot replica of the bloodied sweatpants worn by hostage Naama Levy was also installed at an intersection near the DNC as a reminder of the hostages’ ongoing plight.
Americans Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Omer Neutra and Keith Siegel were kidnapped by Hamas and remain in captivity, though their current condition is unknown.
Hamas is also still holding the bodies of Judith and Gadi Haggai, and Itay Chen, according to the American-Jewish Committee.
