“You are going to be with me and you will be the mother of my children”

When thousands of Hamas terrorists invaded Israel on October 7, 2023, Ilan Weiss (65) left home to join an emergency group in Kibbutz Biri. He tried to protect them but they also took his wife away. Shiri53 years old and His daughter Noga, 18. Then the three began to undergo parallel trials blindly, each without knowing what had happened to the others. Ilan was never seen again: he was killed by terrorists, who still hold his body hostage. Shiri and Noga meet again in the most unexpected circumstances, with a marriage proposal, a ring and a warning: “We are going to release them, but you are going to stay with me, and you will be the mother of my children.”

A young family member remembered it in his final hours, five months after he was released as part of a peace deal between Israel and Hamas negotiated by Qatar and the United States. In Gaza she visited several houses and shared a room with another hostage. For the avoidance of doubt, They always went out at night and forced her to wear hijab and travel hand in hand with her captor.They will believe that she is his wife.

Suddenly he started receiving letters. She was still scared, but she was calm enough to accept the challenge. “Well, I'm going to play with them and I'm going to do what they say as long as they don't shoot me,” tried to gain his confidence.

“One moment they were playing with us and laughing, the next second they came with guns. You always have to entertain them,” she recalls now of the terrorists' mood swings. There was a risk of death. She deposed that the last time she saw her father and mother was on October 7.

Until faith gives way to an unexpected maneuver by a captor: the man approaches Noga with a ring and proposes marriage.

“He gave me a ring on the 14th and I was with him till the 50th.“, said the young woman during an interview with Israel's Channel 12. The kidnapper told her that he loved her and wanted to marry her. And left her a stern warning: “Everyone will be released, but you are going. stay You're going to be with me and you're going to have my children.” His proposal stunned the young man, but what happened next was even more surprising.

The kidnapper who claimed to be in love is a stickler for tradition. One day, Noga He saw him enter with a woman to the house where she was confined. She was dressed in Arabic from head to toe. approached. His presence struck the 18-year-old like lightning.

“I realized it was my mother. I thought they killed her. I thought I was alone. Suddenly, she was alive and I was no longer alone,” he reflected in an interview with Israeli television. Shiri was brought closer to her daughter to approve the marriage.

About five weeks later, on November 25, Weiss and her mother were released along with 11 other hostages. Five months have passed since his release. However, Noga cannot forget the terror.

“I spent 50 days thinking that people didn't understand fear, that they would get tired and shoot me, or that they didn't need me anymore. That night they locked us in the room and suddenly opened the room. They would shoot us in the middle of the night without our knowledge,” he revealed in his latest testimony.

The younger, the father, left the kibbutz home first. At 7:15 p.m., he jumped out the door to join an Israeli emergency group in the face of the Hamas attack. Little did the women know they would never see him again: After weeks of being missing, he was pronounced dead by authorities on January 1. However, he tried to protect them until the last moment: he ordered them to take refuge in the bunker of the house.

They went there as the only connection to the outside world was the cell phone. The same thing happened in dozens of homes: device screens showed messages from relatives and neighbors, stories of flames and suddenly unanswered questions.

Despite precautions and silence to avoid intruders, the terrorists reached the Weiss family home. “They started shooting at the door, about 40 shots until they got inside.” Noga recalled.

Shiri instructed her daughter to hide under the bed. The young woman was lurking there, phone in hand. Shiri wanted to be a decoy to distract the Hamas attackers.

“They came in and took my mother. After they took her out, I heard gunshots. I didn't think they kidnapped her, I thought they killed her,” the young woman said. However, the girl was still alive and was taken out of the beer. Walking through the horror of burnt houses and scattered bodies, the woman believed her daughter was dead.

Noga, who was in hiding, meanwhile communicated with her sisters through WhatsApp. They lived in student housing in other parts of Beeri. Noga's sisters talked to her for 12 hours until they were rescued. That was the kickoff to their attempt to convince the young woman to escape.

At the insistence of the sisters, frightened by the smoke that had already entered the house, Noga left his lodgings and tried to escape by standing up. But it was discovered by a group of terrorists in the area.

“About 40 terrorists with Kalashnikovs surrounded me. They tied my hands behind my back. As they were taking me away, I saw the corpses of people I knew from the kibbutz. Within minutes they put me in a car and started driving away,” Noga said. .

They took her on the other side to Gaza. And then that life began blindly, on the edge of the abyss, in which she tried to cheat what she considered a fatal fate. An unexpected proposal and request for her hand brings him closer to his mother and brings him back to the light. He got freedom in 50th year. Five months later he still couldn't shake the terror from his body.