The four captives rescued by Israeli forces in the Gaza Strip on June 8, 2024, had been abducted from a desert rave near the border during Hamas' wide-ranging assault into Israel on Oct. 7. One had emerged as an icon of the agonizing hostage crisis that is still far from over.

Noa Argamani, 26, appeared in a series of videos that captured the painful trajectory of their plight.

In the first, filmed by the attackers, she is being forced onto a motorbike by several men after being seized with her boyfriend, Avinatan Or, whose whereabouts are still unknown. “Don't kill me!” she screamed with one arm outstretched, the other pinned down.

In another video released by Hamas in mid-January, she appeared gaunt and spoke — almost certainly under duress — of other hostages being killed in airstrikes months into Israel's massive offensive.

And then there was a third video, in which she appeared in family photos in the background as her mother, a Chinese immigrant to Israel who has stage four brain cancer, pleaded with her captors to release her only child so she could see her before she dies.

“I want to see her one more time. Talk to her one more time,” Liora Argamani, 61, said. “I don’t have a lot of time left in this world.”

On Saturday, after eight months of captivity, Israeli forces rescued Argamani and three men who had all been kidnapped from the Tribe of Nova music festival, where Hamas and other militants killed over 350 people in the worst massacre in Israel's history.

The rescue operation came amid a major Israeli air and ground offensive in central Gaza that has killed and wounded hundreds of Palestinians, including at least 94 on Saturday.

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