Noga Weiss, an 18-year-old Israeli who spent 50 days in Gaza before being released from Hamas imprisonment last year, disclosed on 25th April that one of her captors had declared they would get married, handed her a ring and stated that she would live in Gaza forever to bear and raise his children, reported The Times of Israel. “He gave me a ring on day 14 (in captivity) and I stayed with him until day 50.” She recounted that he told her, “Everyone will be released, but you will stay here with me and have my children.” She added, “I pretended to laugh so he wouldn’t shoot me in the head,” in response.
Her kidnapper expressed his love for Noga after a few days of being held hostage and informed her that he was going to bring his mother to their apartment so she could approve of their marriage. Afterwards, a woman with an Arab appearance came into the flat. It took Noga a while to realize it was her mother. “I thought she’d been murdered, I thought I was alone. Suddenly, she’s alive, and I’m not alone,” she expressed.
However, 53-year-old Shiri, her mother who was also abducted into Gaza on 7th October and later reunited with her daughter was unwilling to comply. 26-year-old Meytal, one of Noga’s two sisters disclosed that although their mother initially attempted to gently decline the proposal, the Hamas kidnapper did not appear to accept it, so she yelled at him until he understood.
The prospect that she would be stuck in Gaza forever with the terrorist stayed with her even after her mother made it evident she would not accept the proposal. Noga mentioned, “People don’t understand the feeling of fear. I was 50 days, 24/7, with the thought that they would get tired of me and just shoot me or that they wouldn’t need me in the end, or that they would shoot us while we slept in the middle of the night.”
Noga voiced that as long as there are 133 captives in Gaza, she will not be able to grieve for her father. “They have been there for an indescribable amount of time. At one point, they brought us a half-litre bottle of water for two days. You can’t survive like this for 200 days.” She unveiled that upon their vehicle’s entry into Gaza, thousands of Palestinians cheered some of them even younger than her. They attempted to hit her and pull her hair through the broken windows. “I didn’t understand why they were delaying shooting me.”
During her imprisonment, she was relocated between different residences, always wearing a hijab and instructed to clasp her captor’s hand to give the impression that they were married rather than Israeli hostages. “They brought cards for us to play with, and I told myself, ‘I’ll play with them and do whatever they want as long as they don’t shoot.’ Their moods changed so quickly. One minute they played with us and laughed, the next they’d come in with a gun. You always had to please them.”
She remembered how her captors had insisted on calling her an invader and that Israel was their property. One of them claimed to be an elementary school teacher and to have been wrongfully ejected from his house by Israelis. Meytal noted that Shiri observed houses catching fire as she was being removed from Be’eri and was certain that her daughter was suffering the same fate.
Meytal her other sister Ma’ayan (23) maintained daily contact with Noga via WhatsApp while residing in different student residences in different areas of Be’eri. Noga was advised to flee their parents’ burning property by the elder sisters, who spent twelve hours hiding in their safe rooms before being found by Israel Defense Forces (IDF) forces.
Father killed, mother and daughter kidnapped
On 7th October, Noga was in her parents’ Kibbutz Be’eri house when hundreds of terrorists headed by Hamas invaded Israel. At 7:15 am, her 56-year-old father Ilan departed the house to join the kibbutz emergency squad, and he never returned. It was subsequently established that he was killed on the same day and that his remains were taken into Gaza. Ilan kept his wife and daughter in the safe room of the house. “They started shooting at the door, something like 40 shots until they managed to get in. We saw the conversations on WhatsApp and understood what was happening. People were writing that their house was on fire and then stopped answering.”
Shiri told her daughter to hide beneath the bed because she thought the terrorists would shoot her as soon as they entered the room and miss Noga. The young woman conveyed, “I went under the bed, and they came in and took her. After they took her outside, I heard gunshots. I thought she was murdered and not kidnapped.”
Noga was able to leave the house covertly and attempted to hide amid some bushes, but the kibbutz was full of terrorists and she was soon discovered. “Something like 40 terrorists surrounded me with Kalashnikovs. They tied my hands behind my back. As they took me away, I saw the bodies of people I knew from the kibbutz. A few minutes later, they put me in a car and started driving.”
