Who is Noa Argamani, the Israeli hostage who went viral for a video in which she pleaded for her life from the motorcycle on which she was kidnapped

“I want to see her one more time. Talk to her one more time”. Liora Argamani’s words were the words of a mother who lived – and still lives today – in the uncertainty that her heart could stop at any moment, and asked to be in contact again with her daughter Noa, kidnapped on October 7 by Hamas, once again before dying.

Liora’s plea from a wheelchair paid off. This Saturday, Noa was released by the Israeli army along with three other hostages in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the center of the Gaza Strip, after a mega operation with intense attacks.

“I don’t have much time left in this world,” said Liora Argamani, who is 61 years old and suffers from stage four brain cancer, in that video where her husband also appears. In the recording you can see the two of them leafing through a photo album together that testifies to the happiness of both of them with their daughter.

Noa Argamani was kidnapped at a music festival on October 7, when Hamas militants swept into southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking another 250 hostage. Noa was one of those hostages.

The video of her kidnapping was one of the first to come to light, and the image of her horrified face was widely shared: Noa sitting between two men on a motorcycle, one arm extended and the other held by one of her captors while He shouted “Don’t kill me!” The horror, for her, had begun a few hours before.

Noa was one of the people enjoying the Nova Music Festival in the middle of the desert, near Re’im, when armed men burst into the place and opened fire, leaving dozens of dead in their wake.

The young woman sent a desperate message to a friend at 8:10 a.m. on October 7 saying that she was in a parking lot and “couldn’t get out,” to which her friend responded: “Hide. Let me know that everything is fine.”

More than two hours later, she wrote to her friend: “We don’t have a car.” That was the last time Noa’s friends and family heard from her, before video emerged of her screaming “don’t kill me” as she was taken to Gaza.

After that image, of that desperate young woman screaming for her life, little was known about her. Until mid-January, Hamas released a video of her in captivity.

That recording showed an emaciated Noa, talking about other hostages like her killed in airstrikes, and frantically asking Israel to take her and the others back home.

When Yonatan Levi saw the video of his friend Noa in captivity, he said he could barely recognize the intelligent and free spirit of a woman who liked parties and traveling and who studied computer science.

“When I saw the video I thought maybe he was alive physically, but he had died inside,” said Levi, who met Argamani during a diving course in Eilat, a city in southern Israel.

A few months before her kidnapping, Argamani asked her to help her manage her mother’s insurance, she said. As an only child, she was an important part of her mother’s life and care, and she seemed hopeful that she would be okay, Levi noted.

Mom Liora’s plea in the video to talk to her daughter again paid off. The family will be together again, as before that fateful October 7, 2023.

In the same video, Noa’s father, Yaakov Argamami, caressed the family photo albums and could not hold back his tears. “I miss everything about her. Hug her,” he said.

The hug in which he was able to hug her again today, after more than eight months of anguish and waiting.