Freed hostage Noa Argamani spoke at a ceremony marking 50 years since Operation Entebbe, drawing parallels to Operation Arnon that rescued her from Hamas captivity. She sat alongside Fighter A, who took part in her rescue.
Hostage survivor Noa Argamani recently attended a ceremony marking 50 years since Operation Entebbe, drawing a chilling comparison between the decades-old mission and the one that freed her from captivity: “Almost 50 years separate Operation Entebbe from Operation Arnon, but that’s just time.” Despite changes in technology and tactics over the years, she said, “the value remains the same—the knowledge that the State of Israel doesn’t give up on its people, even when the mission seems almost impossible.”
Photo from Noa Argamani’s Instagram page
A particularly moving moment came when Fighter A—who took part in the operation that rescued her—sat beside her on the panel. “I remember the first moment it hit me that we were on our way out. One of the fighters just hugged me and shielded me with his entire body. I felt what a warm, loving hug was—something I hadn’t felt in such a long time after a period when I was alone,” she recalled.
The first question she asked, she said, was whether her mother Liora, of blessed memory, was still alive. “Throughout the entire period I didn’t know anything. When they told me we were now on our way home and I could see her—it was something I couldn’t process. A split second before, it seemed so far away,” she added.
Photo from Noa Argamani’s X page
She went on to share some of what she felt during the hardest period of her life: “For 246 days I counted every day, every minute, and every second until the moment I could return home and reunite with my family. ‘Noa, we came to take you home’—that’s a sentence that will always be etched in my memory, the moment I saw light for the first time after a long period of darkness.”
Argamani took the opportunity to express pride: “The greatest strength of the IDF and the State of Israel isn’t just the ability to defeat enemies, but the unwavering commitment to bring its people home. That’s the legacy connecting Entebbe to Operation Arnon, and I hope it will also be the legacy that continues to guide the coming generations.” She concluded by emphasizing that the hardest decisions are also the ones that define who we are as a people.
