During the 246 days of captivity Almog Meir Jan (21 years old), Andrey Kozlov (27) and Shlomi Ziv (40) were always together. «The terrorists beat us, but we remained strong, supporting each other. We managed to remain very close,” Jan told his family. A first reconstruction of the eight months of being held hostage by Hamas, interrupted on Saturday with the unexpected release. In the mission conducted by the Israeli army and intelligence, in which the anti-terrorism agent Arnon Zmora was killed, 25-year-old Noa Argamani was also saved.
All four former hostages are still in hospital, with their families by their side. The first reports of their life in captivity are starting to arrive in the Israeli media. «I kept a kind of calendar to count the days. So I knew that today (8 June) my mother was celebrating her birthday”, explained Meir Jan. “The best gift I could receive”, commented her mother, Orit Meir. An immense happiness mixed with the pain of discovering the death of Almog’s father, Yossi, in those same hours. The night before his son’s release the man had a heart attack. To discover the body, the Tsahal officials came to his door to give the happy news. «My brother died of grief and he could not see Almog’s return. He couldn’t stand it: every (hostage) deal that was canceled broke his heart,” his sister Dina said.
Almog, like the other three freed hostages, had been kidnapped from the Re’im music festival on the morning of October 7. For eight months the terrorists kept him together with Kozlov and Ziv in total darkness. Some information about what was happening outside came through the television. “We saw the demonstration in Kidnapped Square (in Tel Aviv) the day before Yom HaShoah, and I saw my photo hanging there.” For Almog, that image was a sign of hope. “They have not forgotten us and are fighting for us”, was his comment reported by his sister, Gaot Algrabli.
Detained in a house in the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the center of the Gaza Strip, the 21-year-old recounted the moments of the Israeli raid to free him. «When the Israeli Defense Forces soldiers arrived to rescue us, both we and the terrorists were sleeping. We heard the shots and at first we didn’t believe it. During the rescue they shot us from every direction and when we got out we got stuck in the armored vehicle twice. It was endlessly exhausting.”
The terrorists’ crossfire caused the death of Arnon Zmora, an officer of the elite Yamam counter-terrorism unit. Thousands of people attended his funeral yesterday. «You’re not just my hero. You are the hero of an entire nation”, her mother, Ruti, greeted him for the last time. Among those who paid tribute to his son was Aviram Meir, uncle of Almog Meir Jan. “Arnon brought joy to our families and to the entire people of Israel,” said Aviram Meir through tears.
US and British support played an important role in the operation, now named after Arnon Zmora, the Israeli media write. American and British drones flew over large areas of Gaza, providing the Jewish state’s intelligence with new information to locate the freed hostages. Other hostages may have been involved in the mission to Nuseirat, conducted at 11.00 in the morning to surprise the terrorists. Hamas claimed some died in Israeli-led airstrikes, but the army did not confirm. According to the New York Times there is the possibility that some abductees were killed, but not by friendly fire but by terrorists. “Hamas has given orders to its men to immediately shoot prisoners if they think Israeli forces are about to arrive,” writes the American newspaper.
There are currently 120 kidnapped people still in the hands of Hamas, of which at least 30, according to Tsahal information, are no longer alive.
