The Women and Girls We’ll Never Forget

Y ou would expect organizations that ostensibly represent women to condemn violence against women. Yet for many such organizations, it took far too long to condemn Hamas’s sadistic, brutal violence against Israeli women on October 7, 2023 — if they did so at all. Their response, or lack thereof, is a stain on their reputations to this day, one year on.

Absent the international concern that such an attack would normally generate, Israel has fought ever since to fill the void — telling the stories of the women raped, captured, and killed by Hamas, and of the children the terrorists brutally killed, in order to show the world what happened. While women’s organizations cowered in fear of political backlash or stayed silent out of plain indifference (or worse), Israelis have ensured that these stories of survival, death, trauma, and resilience — the horror of October 7 itself — cannot be denied or ignored.

Emily Hand was eight years old when Hamas kidnapped her from Kibbutz Be’eri. She was having a sleepover at her friend’s house and was away from her parents, when terrorists stormed into the kibbutz, which is located one mile from the Gaza border. The Israeli military first told Emily’s father, Tom, that his daughter’s body had been found in the town. In the confusion of October 7’s aftermath, it was difficult to determine who had been killed and who had been taken hostage. Tom gave a heartbreaking television interview in which he said that he was almost consoled by the news that Emily was killed in the onslaught; death was less painful than what Hamas might do to the girl in captivity. The Israel Defense Forces then shared intel with Tom that Emily was alive, “likely in a tunnel somewhere under Gaza,” Tom told CNN in early November. “It’s her birthday on the 17th [of November]. She will be nine,” he said. “She won’t even know what day it is. She won’t know it’s her birthday.”

In late November, after 50 days in captivity, Emily was released and brought home as part of a hostage deal. A year later, Emily and Tom live in a city north of Tel Aviv. They are still unable to return to Be’eri, still coming to terms with the slaughter of 120 Be’eri residents, and still mourning the loss of family members — including Emily’s mother. The family plans to return one day, though. Tom has said of Emily that “in some ways she’s even stronger than she was before. It’s given her inner strength, knowing that she dealt with what Hamas threw at her.” Emily is back at school and with friends. But she won’t enter her home unless Tom is there.

Noa Argamani was abducted on the back of a Hamas terrorist’s motorcycle, as seen in a picture that made her face known to the world. She was at the Nova music festival when the terrorists, some of whom had crossed into Israel on paragliders, began to murder civilians at random, firing into crowds of young people gathered at the festival. Noa’s expression of agony and fear went immediately viral. Liora, her mother, was dying of brain cancer — her final wish was to see Noa one last time before she died. Noa wasn’t released in the hostage deals, and her family and the Israeli public feared for what might be done to this young, beautiful woman. IDF forces rescued Noa and three male hostages during a surprise operation in May; she had been held in the apartment of Hamas-affiliated civilians. Noa was reunited with her mother, who died shortly after. At Liora’s funeral in July, her daughter said that “against all odds, I was privileged to be with you in your last moments and to hear your last words. Thank you for being strong and holding on so that I could see you at least one more time, and so that Dad wouldn’t be left alone.”

In the months since her rescue, Noa has traveled to the U.S. to speak with delegations about the hostages still held captive in Gaza. In July, she traveled with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu when he addressed Congress, where she sat next to Netanyahu’s wife, Sara, and Elon Musk. Noa recently went to the Global Citizen Festival in New York, where she met Scooter Braun, Post Malone, and Ed Sheeran. Braun was “in tears at the sight of her” and was overjoyed that “she and other survivors came together to dance again and listen to music in a place that promotes unity. We will bring them home and dance again.”

Shani Louk was captured and murdered on October 7. Hamas threw her corpse in the back of a pickup truck and drove it around Gaza after the attack, her body displayed as a kind of trophy. Her parents identified the 23-year-old tattoo artist by her ink. Israeli forces recovered her body in May, and she was at last laid to rest, buried on her mother Ricarda’s birthday. “Now she will have her own place next to us and we can go there whenever we want. And she can rest,” her father Nissim said.

Shiri Bibas was taken hostage with her little sons, Ariel, age four, and baby Kfir, just nine months old. Ariel turned five in captivity. Kfir’s second birthday is on January 18. They remain in captivity, as does Shiri’s husband, Yarden.

Shiri is among ten women still in captivity. A total of 97 hostages remain in Gaza, at least 34 of them believed to be dead. Female survivors of October 7 and of time in captivity have shared their stories of courage and resolve. Many more keep those stories alive. For that, I’m grateful; because of them, we can name the heroic Israelis who, confronted with pure evil, persevered.

I’ll never forget Emily’s innocence. Or Noa’s strength. Or Shani’s last moments. Or, for that matter, the graphic images of those who were murdered on October 7. Their families had to give permission for those images to be made public. And as terrible as it must have been to let their family members’ faces, and deaths, and kidnappings, be shown to the world, it’s important for the world to have seen: Israel’s survivors and fallen are known, loved, and remembered, forever.