Former hostage Noa Argamani marked the Jewish holiday of love, Tu B’Av, on Sunday with a message posted on social media addressed to her partner Avinatan Or , who is still in Hamas captivity in Gaza. Argamani and Or were kidnapped from the Supernova music festival near Re’im on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed the Gaza border and invaded southern Israel, murdering some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages. The two were separated during the abduction.
Argamani was rescued from Nuseirat in central Gaza by IDF forces in a daring daylight operation on June 8, along with hostages Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv. In a post shared on Instagram on Sunday, Argamani reminisced about the previous times she had celebrated Tu B’Av — sometimes referred to as the “Jewish Valentine’s Day” — with Or. “Every year, you would bring me a bouquet of flowers and tell me a nice story about what Tu B’Av is actually about,” she wrote.
“How in the past, the girls would wear white and go out dancing in the vineyard in Shilo next to the full moon in order to find a groom.” “That’s why Tu B’Av symbolizes beauty and love,” she added. Her partner Or, the second of seven brothers, grew up in the West Bank settlement of Shilo.
Sharing a second image, this time of her kissing Or on the beach, Argamani wrote that she was “wishing us many more kisses and days full of love — together and not apart.” Footage of Argamani’s abduction, in which she was seen screaming as her Hamas captor drove her away on the back of a motorcycle while Or was held back, became some of the most well-known footage of the October 7 terror onslaught. She accompanied Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on his trip to Washington DC last month , where she told him that the remaining hostages in Gaza “must be brought home as quickly as possible, before it is too late.
” It is believed that 111 of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of 39 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, and four hostages were released before that. Seven hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 24 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the bodies of two IDF soldiers who were killed in 2014..
