Hamas attacks: Noa, Shani, Doron… who are the hostages captured in Israel?

2023-10-08 20:21:33

For its surprise attack in Israel, Hamas used the hostage weapon. “This is what scares us the most,” Joëlle, a Franco-Israeli woman barricaded in her home in Ashdod, about forty kilometers from the Gaza Strip, told us on the evening of Saturday October 7. Fighting was still underway Sunday to free captured Israelis. How many are they ? The Israeli government mentions “more than 100 prisoners”. Who are they ? Soldiers and civilians.

All weekend, the media broadcast endless testimonies from Israelis searching for their untraceable loved ones. Some explained that they had seen them on videos of Hamas hostages in Gaza, circulating on social networks. Many of the missing were participating at the time of the attack at an open-air music festival near Kibbutz Reim, close to the border with Gaza.

“I saw Noa in the video, distraught, terrified”

Among these festival-goers were Noa Argamani, 25, and her companion Avinatan Or. video shows them being taken away by force by a group of men, him on foot with his hands tied behind his back, she on a motorbike, screaming and pleading. Behind them, smoke blackens the sky.

Avinatan’s brother, Moshe Or, identified them in these images. “I saw Noa in the video, distraught, terrified, I can’t imagine the panic that gripped her when she was taken away on that motorcycle,” he told Channel 12, the Israeli affiliate of CNN. He added that he knew of “five or six people” at the Nova Festival who were also missing.

Noa was partying in the south of Israel in a peace music festival when Hams terrorists kidnapped her and dragged her from Israel into Gaza.

Noa is held hostage by Hamas.

She could be your daughter, sister, friend.#BringBackOurFamily pic.twitter.com/gi2AStVdTQ

— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) October 7, 2023

Upset, Noa Argamani’s father spoke on an Israeli television channel. “I was hoping it was a mistake, that it wasn’t true. (…) And then, at the hospital, a guy asked me if I wanted to see the video. I said yes. I saw that it was Noa, with certainty. She was so petrified, so scared,” he says, in tears.

In an other video, published later and not authenticated, the Israeli woman is filmed sitting on a bench, drinking water. “We managed to locate his phone, it is located somewhere in Gaza,” Amir, his roommate, announced to the Parisian. He met the young woman during a trip to India last year. “Everyone loves her, she has a great personality. She always takes care of others,” he says to describe the woman who studies data science at Ben-Gurion University.

“My daughter, Shani Nicole Louk, German, was kidnapped”

Shani Louk, 22, of German and Israeli nationality, was also present at the music festival. It is her partially naked body that we would see in a propaganda video broadcast on social networks. She lies unconscious on her stomach in the car of armed men parading with their fists raised. Her face is hidden by her very long brown hair. Impossible to know if she is alive.

Her cousin immediately identified her. “We recognized her with her tattoos and her long dreadlocks,” he told Washington Post. Shani Louk’s mother published a video, in which she asks for help. “This morning, my daughter, Shani Nicole Louk, a German citizen, was kidnapped with a group of tourists by Palestinian Hamas in southern Israel. (…) I ask for help, for news. » According to Spiegel, Shani’s parents were informed by their daughter’s bank, domiciled in Tel Aviv, that her credit card had been used in Gaza.

The mother of Shani Louk, the woman whose body was seen on video in the back of a pick-up truck driven by Palestinian terrorists to Gaza, released a statement earlier today.

She confirmed she had seen her daughter on the video & asked the public for help with more information pic.twitter.com/LDcPsjGHP8

— Visegrad 24 (@visegrad24) October 8, 2023

Several German nationals, who also have Israeli nationality, are among those kidnapped by Hamas, the German Foreign Ministry said on Sunday. “To our knowledge, these are people who all have Israeli nationality in addition to German nationality,” according to the ministry, which did not specify the number of nationals concerned.

“There was a blanket over my little girls’ heads”

Another video shared on social media shows a group of people, including children, being transported in the back of a truck under threat from armed men. One of these fighters covers a woman’s hair with a cloth. Yoni Asher assured CNN having recognized his wife, Doron, as well as his mother-in-law and his two daughters aged 3 and 5 among the hostages filmed.

????????“Dear Mr Olaf Scholz: My wife Sharon with her mother—both German citizens—and my children were taken by Hamas terrorists to Gaza. I beg you…please help us…get my wife & kids out of there.”—Yoni Asher, who recognized his family in a hostage video. Abducted from home. #Israel pic.twitter.com/5fRND664Xr

— ????????Paula Chertok???? (@PaulaChertok) October 7, 2023

His relatives were visiting his mother-in-law in Nir Oz, a kibbutz near the border with Gaza. Without news from them on Saturday, Yoni Asher feared a kidnapping and geolocated his wife’s phone in Gaza. Then he saw the video.

“I recognized her immediately. I saw a terrorist covering his head. There was a blanket over my little girls’ heads and I immediately recognized my oldest daughter too. They were kidnapped with my mother-in-law and her partner,” he explained to the German newspaper Bildensuring that his wife and his mother-in-law have German nationality.

” It’s my grandmother ! »

On Facebook, an Israeli woman claimed to have identified her 85-year-old grandmother among the hostage images. “That’s my grandmother, there! Kidnapped from her home and taken to the Gaza Strip. Her name is Yaffa Adar, she is 85 years old! My grandmother who founded the kibbutz with her two hands,” wrote Adva Adar on Facebook, posting a photo of an elderly woman with gray glasses, sitting in a van and surrounded by fighters.

“No one talks to us, the only information we have, we discovered from the published videos,” she laments. On another Facebook profile, a man identified as Adva Adar’s father also specifies that it is indeed Yaffa Adar, his mother, in the photo.

Images circulating on social media also show captured Israeli soldiers. The Ezzedine al-Qassam brigades, the armed wing of Hamas, claimed in a video to have taken “several enemy soldiers” prisoner. The al-Quds Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, also declared that they were holding “many soldiers”.