An Israeli woman who was held captive by Hamas for nearly two months following the Oct. 7 attack revealed that her captor gave her a ring and told her that she would have his children.
Noga Weiss, 18, was two weeks into her captivity in the Gaza Strip when one of her abductors professed his love for her, she recalled to Channel 12, according to the Times of Israel.
“He gave me a ring on day 14 [in captivity], and I stayed with him until day 50,” Noga said of her captor’s sick proposal.
“He told me, ‘Everyone will be released, but you will stay here with me and have my children,’” she added.
When asked how she responded to the proposition, Noga said that she “pretended to laugh so he wouldn’t shoot me in the head.”
After several days, the captor told Noga that he was bringing her mother over so she could approve of the marriage.
“I thought she’d been murdered, I thought I was alone. Suddenly, she’s alive, and I’m not alone,” Noga told Channel 12 of the first time she saw her mother since they were both kidnapped.
Shiri Weiss, 53, eventually yelled at the terrorist until he understood they were rejecting his proposal, Noga’s sister, Meytal, said.
The captors moved Noga between different homes during the 50-day ordeal, the teen recalled.
Each time they moved, she was made to wear a hijab and hold her captor’s hand so that they would appear like a married couple, she told Channel 12.
“They brought cards for us to play with, and I told myself, ‘I’ll play with them and do whatever they want as long as they don’t shoot,” she added.
“Their moods changed so quickly. One minute they played with us and laughed, the next they’d come in with a gun. You always had to please them.”
The captors frequently talked about how Israel rightfully belonged to them and told Noga that she was an occupier, she added.
“People don’t understand the feeling of fear,” the teen said of her time as a hostage.
“I was 50 days, 24/7, with the thought that they would get tired of me and just shoot me or that they wouldn’t need me in the end, or that they would shoot us while we slept in the middle of the night.”
Noga was with her parents at their home in Kibbutz Be’eri when Hamas descended on the community in the early hours of Oct. 7.
Husband and father Ilan Weiss, 56, left home at 7:15 a.m. to join the kibbutz emergency squad.
He was later determined to have been killed, and the terror group is supposedly holding his remains in Gaza, the Times of Israel noted.
Meanwhile, Noga and Shiri took cover in their safe room.
“They started shooting at the door, something like 40 shots until they managed to get [in the safe room],” Noga said of the attack.
“We saw the conversations on WhatsApp and understood what was happening. People were writing that their house was on fire and then stopped answering,” she added.
“I went under the bed, and they came in and took her. After they took her outside, I heard gunshots. I thought she was murdered and not kidnapped,” Noga said of that harrowing moment.
Noga’s older sisters, Meytal, 26, and 23-year-old Ma’ayan, were living in student apartments in a different part of the kibbutz.
They texted their sister on WhatsApp throughout the day and urged her to get out of their parents’ house as it went up in flames.
Noga initially tried to hide in nearby bushes, but was quickly spotted by the terrorists, she said.
“Something like 40 terrorists surrounded me with Kalashnikovs. They tied my hands behind my back. As they took me away, I saw the bodies of people I knew from the kibbutz. A few minutes later, they put me in a car and started driving,” she told Channel 12.
Noga and her mother were both released with the first group of freed hostages on Nov. 25.
Noga said she still cannot mourn for her father until the remaining hostages are returned.
“They have been there for an indescribable amount of time. At one point, they brought us a half-liter bottle of water for two days. You can’t survive like this for 200 days,” she lamented.
Noga admitted that the events of Oct. 7 caused her to lose much of her faith in the Israel Defense Forces, but said that she still plans to enlist in May.
“On the day of my release, seeing soldiers in IDF uniform, it was the first time [since October 7] that I felt safe, so that did change something,” she said.
