Former hostage Noga Weiss, who was kidnapped during the October 7 massacre and released in a November 2023 deal, on Friday spoke about her time in captivity and her hope that Hamas will release her father's body.
"What I can say about my father is that they told me that he was murdered," she told Kan Reshet Bet. "I cannot really digest this and begin to try to mourn so long as he is there. As far as I understand, he is not alive. Regardless, there is always hope that he will come back and I'll be able to embrace him. Until Dad is here and all the hostages are here, we won't really be able to have closure."
"I hope that this coming Memorial Day, we will have a grave to visit," she added.
Recalling the tragedy of the October 7 massacre, she said, "On the morning of October 7, we were in the bomb shelter, my parents and I. Basically they called my father up and he told us, 'Okay, I'm going.' Later we discovered that just a few minutes after he left the house, he had already been murdered and kidnapped to Gaza. He was declared missing for three months, and after that we understood that this is what had happened."
When asked about the recent agreement with Hamas, which saw 33 hostages, eight of them dead, released in exchange for thousands of living and dangerous terrorists, Weiss said, "I felt great happiness. Every hostage who returned is more air to breathe and more life returning - people reborn, ,entire families who were born anew. I was not surprised that the situation was so difficult - I know what I experienced for 50 days and I cannot imagine how it is, how they could continue to survive for such a long period afterwards."