Israeli hostage rescued from home of a Palestinian journalist
Israeli hostage Noa Argamani was rescued from the home of Palestinian journalist Abdallah Aljamal on Saturday, raising questions about the role of Gaza civilians holding abductees.
Noa Argamani
Palestinian sources in the Nuseirat refugee camp confirmed to The Press Service of Israel that Argamani, 26, was held in the home of Dr. Ahmed Aljamal, whose son Abdallah, was a reporter for the Palestine Chronicle and had also worked for Al Jazeera.
TPS-IL reached out to sources in the camp after Ramy Abdu, a Hamas operative blacklisted by Israel in 2020 disclosed, perhaps unwittingly, that Israeli forces entered the Aljamal home. Abdu is CEO of Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor, a Geneva-based non-governmental organization that TPS-IL exposed as a front for Hamas responsible for getting the terror group’s propaganda placed on the record in UN documents widely shared with humanitarian relief groups.
According to the Israel Defence Forces, soldiers only entered two apartment buildings. One was where Argamani was held, while the other, about 200 meters away, was where Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov and Shlomi Ziv were kept. The IDF did not disclose the owners of either home.
The rescue operation took place under heavy fire. One Israeli was killed during the operation. He was identified as Arnon Zamora, an officer in the police’s elite Yamam counterterror unit. The number of Palestinians killed during the fighting, nor details on civilian or combatant casualties could not be independently confirmed.
An author’s page on the Palestine Chronicle website described Abdallah Aljamal as a contributor with articles dating back to May 2019. An author page on Al Jazeera’s English website featured a co-authored 2019 opinion piece accusing Israel of torturing Palestinian prisoners.
The presence of a hostage in the Aljamal home raised questions on social media.
“Palestinians who provide support to Hamas and participate in the kidnapping of captivity of Israelis are NOT civilians, they are legitimate targets under international law,” human rights activist Emily Schrader tweeted.
Others asked if the Aljamal family had been paid to temporarily keep Argamani as she was moved from one hiding place to another.
The IDF has released this statement: “Following the completion of IDF and ISA examinations of reports on the subject, it can be confirmed that Abdallah Aljamal was an operative in the Hamas terrorist organization, who held the hostages Almog Meir Jan, Andrey Kozlov, and Shlomi Ziv captive in his family home in Nuseirat.
The hostages were held captive by Abdallah Aljamal and members of his family in their home. This is further evidence of the deliberate use of civilian homes and buildings by the Hamas terrorist organization to hold Israeli hostages captive in the Gaza Strip.
Israeli security forces will continue to make every effort to bring the hostages home.”
Many of the Israeli hostages taken captive that day were handed over or even sold to Palestinian civilians or criminal groups. In an April interview with the French magazine Le Point, former hostage Nili Margalit said she was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Nir Oz by armed civilians who took her back to Gaza and later sold her to Hamas.
Margalit was later released on November 30, the last day of a temporary ceasefire.
At least 1,200 people were killed, and 252 Israelis and foreigners were taken hostage in Hamas’s attacks on Israeli communities near the Gaza border on October 7. Of the 116 remaining hostages, more than 30 are believed dead.
