Noa Argamani and Avinatan Or reunite in Israel after separate captivities and a two-year wait. Photo / Israel Defence Forces
Bundled on to a motorbike, a screaming Noa Argamani reached a hand out towards her boyfriend Avinatan Or, who watched as he was dragged away by Hamas terrorists.
Her cries, and the separation of the young couple, became one of the most haunting moments of the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel to be captured on camera.
“Don’t kill me,” were the last words Avinatan heard from his girlfriend for two years, until he was released with the last surviving hostages held in Gaza on Monday night NZT.
Safe inside Israel, the emaciated 32-year-old hugged Noa tightly before they shared a kiss in front of the cameras – a reunion for which Israel had waited 737 days.
Noa, who was rescued in June last year, had said her healing would only begin once Avinatan was freed.
“Two years. Two years passed since the last moment I saw Avinatan, the love of my life. Two years since the moment terrorists kidnapped us, put me on a motorcycle, and tore me away from Avinatan before the eyes of the entire world,” she wrote in a social media post on Tuesday.
“Each of us faced death countless times. But both of us, against all odds, came home and were reunited!”
Before October 7, 2023, Noa was studying software engineering at university in Tel Aviv, where she met Avinatan, a fifth-year electrical engineering student about to start a job at a technology company.
The pair quickly became inseparable and were planning to move in together.
Noa, whose mother Liora was dying of brain cancer, described Avinatan as her “anchor” through difficult times.
“There’s this quiet strength in him that radiates peace,” she said in a rare personal interview with the Ynet news website in May.
“My mother and Avinatan are central figures in my life. Their absence is a void I can’t fill. It’s like taking a table and sawing off two of its legs – it just collapses.”
From the moment they were taken from the Nova festival in the desert of southern Israel, they were forced to suffer their own subterranean horrors apart.
“I was held captive with children, women and the elderly, while Avinatan was held alone. I was mostly kept inside houses, while Avinatan was only in the tunnels.
“Hamas released videos and signs of life from me, while there was no information at all about Avinatan,” she wrote.
She was held captive by Hamas for 246 days, adding: “I came back in a heroic rescue operation, and Avinatan returned in a deal”.
Alongside an image of the couple in a helicopter looking over Israel, she added: “After two years apart, we are finally taking our first steps together again in the State of Israel.”
During her time in captivity, which she described as “pure hell”, Noa was moved between tunnels, houses and warehouses, subjected to emotional abuse and injured during an airstrike, with open gashes on her head that were left untreated.
Everywhere she went, she asked about Avinatan, asking “if anyone knew a tall guy with sandy hair”.
“I didn’t know if he was dead or captured. I just believed we’d meet again,” she told Ynet.
On June 8 last year, Noa was rescued by Israeli forces, with three other hostages, in a daylight raid into the centre of Gaza that left at least 100 Palestinians dead.
One of the first things she asked was whether her mother, who had pleaded with Hamas in a video to see Noa one last time, was still alive. Liora was granted her dying wish when her daughter came home. She died three weeks later.
As Israelis danced in the streets of Tel Aviv to celebrate the rescue, Noa began her recovery, faced with the reality of being free while Avinatan remained captive.
She briefly faced a backlash online after being filmed hosting a “celebration of life”, which she admitted “wasn’t ideal while there is still an ongoing war, while our soldiers are still on the battlefield, while there are still 109 hostages that are still there in Gaza, including my partner”.
The first suggestion that Avinatan was still alive came in March this year, when a hostage freed under a previous ceasefire deal said they had seen him in a tunnel.
“Until Avinatan comes back, my heart is in captivity,” Noa wrote at the time.
In the months after she was freed, Noa became one of the most prominent voices campaigning to bring the remaining captives home.
She met United States President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, spoke at the United Nations Security Council, met the leaders of G7 countries in Japan and was named one of Time Magazine’s most influential people of 2025.
“Noa’s advocacy has illuminated Hamas’ extreme brutality, but more importantly, her bravery has embodied Jewish resilience and strength even in the worst moments,” Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, the former US vice-president, wrote for her Time profile.
On the second anniversary of October 7, two days before Hamas and Israel signed a ceasefire deal that would end the hostages’ ordeals, Noa told her followers: “I miss Avinatan more with every passing day.”
“I hold on to hope, every single day, that this nightmare will end soon, and we’ll finally get to live the life we’ve dreamed of.”
With the release of all living hostages, her hope became reality this week.
Their reunion was one of many during a day of jubilation in Israel – a country bitterly divided by the two-year war, which came together to celebrate the return of its 20 missing sons.
Yet as the freed hostages were flown to hospitals, reports of their torture, torment and months living on the edge of death have emerged.
Avinatan was held for the entire two years in isolation under especially harsh conditions in the dark tunnels of Gaza, never meeting other hostages, according to Israel’s Channel 12. He was terrified and starved, losing 30 to 40% of his body weight.
Avinatan never knew that Noa had been saved. Nor would he have known how many people had watched the couple be torn apart and were waiting for them to be brought back together.
After raising his hands in a heart sign to the crowds cheering his return, Avinatan asked one simple request: to share a quiet moment with his girlfriend and their first cigarette in two years.
“We won,” said Noa, the day after he was returned. “We won our personal war and the whole world’s fight with us to get to this moment.”
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