Mom of rescued hostage Noa Argamani dies of brain cancer weeks after they are reunited
The mother of rescued Israeli hostage Noa Argamani has died of brain cancer — just weeks after being granted her dying wish to be reunited with her daughter and embrace her one last time.
Liora Argamani, who had been battling the stage 4 cancer for some time, was 61.
She “spent her final days alongside her daughter Noa, who returned from captivity, and her close family,” the Tel Aviv Sourasky Medical Center said in a statement on Tuesday announcing her death.
The 26-year-old China-born Israeli citizen — who became the face of the Hamas hostage crisis after being kidnapped on Oct. 7 — was finally reunited with her ailing mom after she and three other hostages were rescued in last month’s daring Israeli military operation.
During her eight months in captivity, Argamani’s sick mom had repeatedly voiced her fears that she would lose her battle with the terminal disease before her daughter returned home.
In December, she begged President Biden and the US to help rescue her daughter.
“I am terminally ill with stage 4 brain cancer,” she wrote in a letter to Biden. “All that’s running through my mind before I part ways with my family forever is the chance to hug my daughter, my only child, one last time.”
Argamani, too, has since revealed her “biggest worry” while being held hostage was her parents.
“As an only child to my parents, and a child to a mother with a terminal illness, my biggest worry in captivity was for my parents,” Argamani said in a video released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum on Saturday.
“It is a great privilege to be here after 246 days in Hamas Captivity. It is a great privilege to be by my mother’s side after eight months of uncertainty.”
In the days after being reunited with her mom, hospital staff had revealed the sick mother’s condition was “complicated and tough.”
The hospital’s CEO, Ronni Gamzu, had revealed Argamani was able to at least communicate with her mother, who they believe understood her daughter had returned home safely.
“For the last eight months we are trying to keep her in a status that she can communicate,” the CEO said at the time.
With Post wires
