Noa Argamani, Shlomi Ziv, Almog Meir Zhan, and Andrey Kozlov, the four Israeli hostages who were rescued by the security forces from captivity in Gaza, told the medical teams who welcomed them in Israel that during their days of captivity, they were brainwashed and emotionally abused, and that the terrorists forced them to read the Koran and learn Islamic rulings.
Channel 13 reported that Noa Argamani told her family members that she was being held together with Yossi Sharabi and Itai Svirsky, who were killed in Hamas captivity. The IDF confirmed that Sharabi was apparently killed during an attack on a building near the point where he was being held, and Itai was murdered a few days later.
Noa told her family: “I saw the missile enter the house, I was sure I was going to die. I thought that was it – but I stayed alive.” Noa said that throughout her eight months in captivity, she was moved between several apartments, and was not kept in the tunnels. From time to time, she went out to breathe fresh air, disguised as an Arab woman. She got to take a shower very rarely.
After her rescue, Noa was documented hugging and crying with her father Yaakov, who celebrated his birthday on Shabbat. Later she was also reunited with her mother who suffers from terminal cancer and stays in Ichilov Hospital. In conversations with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and President Yitzhak Herzog, Noa said: “I’m very excited, I haven’t spoken Hebrew in such a long time.”
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Andrey Kozlov told Netanyahu a little about his time in captivity. According to the PM, he kept a diary: “Andrei told me that he had a notebook in captivity and every day he would write one line. Every day a gift.” Later, Andrey also spoke on the phone with President Yitzhak Herzog and told him that he learned Hebrew during his time in captivity. “I started learning Hebrew exactly a year ago, so I had a lot of learning with my friends,” said Andrey, who was kidnapped from the Nova party where he worked as a security guard, about a year after making Aliyah on his own from Russia.
Orit Meir, the mother of Almog Meir Zhan, told Army Radio Sunday morning about her son’s condition since returning: “Almog is fine, excited, and he is also very clear overall, very focused,” she said, adding, “There’s still a way to go, but for a start he’s fine… I’m sure things will work out over time, now we’ll start the process of rehabilitation.”
Orit Meir said that her son was in captivity together with two of the hostages who were rescued, Shlomi Ziv and Andrey Kozlov. “They had each other and they trusted each other. I saw the bond that formed between them, it was very moving to see,” she said.
On the question of whether her son was aware in captivity of the struggle for his release and the release of the other hostages, she replied: “He said that they informed him a little and he heard a little bit of the media. He knew, for example, about our statements, he knew about the demonstrations, and he also knew about the religious, about the conscription law – this he also knew. They updated him.”
She noted that Almog also knew what the date was every day. “He imagined some kind of a calendar. He knew the days he was there. He knew it was my birthday today. He knew that a month ago he celebrated his birthday.”
