Four former Israeli hostages — Noa Argamani, Avinatan Or, Evyatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal — shared accounts of their time in Hamas captivity, some of which had never before been revealed, with a crowd of 2,000 Jewish communal leaders at the Jewish Federations of North America’s opening plenary.

Or, David and Gilboa-Dalal were released in the ceasefire deal in October, after two years in captivity, while Argamani was rescued by the Israeli military in June 2024. David, Gilboa-Dalal and Argamani gave brief remarks, while Or offered the most detailed and harrowing testimony of the evening.

Argamani opened the program by describing the moment she and Or, her boyfriend, were seized as Hamas terrorists attacked the Nova Music festival on Oct. 7, 2023. Dragged onto a motorcycle and taken across the border into Gaza, she recalled being separated from Or, and spending months not knowing whether he was still alive.

“In captivity, I saw two of my friends, Yossi Sharabi and Itay Svirsky, brutally murdered while I survived,” she said. After months of silence, fear and deteriorating conditions, Argamani was rescued in June 2024, returning home to find her mother battling cancer. The two reunited before her mother died three weeks later.

“I want to thank the people who made this final hostage deal possible, everyone involved, especially [U.S. Special Envoy] Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and President [Donald] Trump for believing that saving lives matters [most] of all; your leadership brought hope back into our family’s life, and I will forever be grateful,” said Argamani. 

Or, who was abducted alongside Argamani, delivered the most extensive account of the nightmarish conditions in which he was held. After being abducted by Hamas terrorists alongside Argamani, his girlfriend, from the music festival, he was confined to Hamas’ underground tunnels alone, interacting only with his captors. 

To keep his mind sharp, he counted his steps, tinkered with what he could find in the tunnels and collected data about his environment, crediting his engineering background with keeping him occupied. He also attempted to find some common ground in conversations with his captors. 

At one point in his captivity, he recounted, Or tried to escape, tunneling his way up to the surface over several weeks, hitting a tree root and even reaching the surface before his captors discovered the attempt, and beat him brutally for it.

“It felt like touching life in the place of death,” he said. “Then one night, I reached the outside, I saw stars for the first time in years. I wrote ‘Hostage’ on a white sandbag, planning my next step. But they found out they beat me for days and tied me to a chair for weeks. I was sure I would die there. But even then, I wrote three things next to my bed: ‘This too shall pass,’ ‘Patience’ and ‘Let it be.’ Those words kept me.”

“If I learned one thing in the tunnels, it is that everything can be taken from you: your freedom, your name, your time, your body, but no one can take your mind and your humanity,” said Or.