‘We need to bring Avinatan home and let the light back into our lives’

Ditza Or already knew that something terrible had happened to her son Avinatan before she heard the news that he had been kidnapped by Hamas.

On the afternoon of October 7, she was taking a nap at home in Jerusalem. She had been told about the attacks in the south but thinking that none of her seven children were in the area, while distressed by news, thought her own family was safe. As someone who keeps Shabbat, Ditza hadn’t checked her phone, so, at that point, had no reason to think otherwise.

“At about 3 o’clock, I was resting when I heard footsteps under the window of my room, and these footsteps caught my attention. I listened, and then I heard the knock on the door of the house. I didn't want to open it, but they kept knocking. Finally, someone else opened it, and I heard the voices of my two children.”

As her children don’t drive on Shabbat, Ditza immediately realised that something terrible must have happened, so when they knocked on her bedroom door, “I decided that I will not let this enter my world. I knew that something very horrible was on the other side of the door, and I decided that I wasn’t going to open the door to allow that into my life.”

Eventually, her children just let themselves into the room, accompanied by a psychologist. “And we know the meaning of such a mission, such a group.” It was her daughter who delivered the news that both Avinatan and his girlfriend Noa Argamani had been kidnapped.

“There are no words that can explain what a mother feels, what I felt at that moment. It's like lightning striking, but from all directions at once. Then all the light inside of you disappears, and the darkness means no thoughts, no emotions, no air, nothing. Just nothing.”

The video of Avinatan and Noa being abducted, with Noa pleading for her life, has become one of the most widely viewed pieces of footage from October 7, capturing the moment when hundreds of Hamas terrorists broke through the border with Gaza and attacked festival goers, slaughtering more than 360 of them and taking more than 40 hostage. During their murderous rampage throughout southern Israel, they killed over 1,200 people and took more than 250 hostage into Gaza, where 14 months later, 101 remain.

It took Ditza about two weeks before she could bring herself to watch the whole 20-second video, and as she shares her story with an audience at Chabad’s Jewish Life Centre in Borehamwood, she looks away from the screen as those moments are replayed.

“Until now, I still prefer not to watch it again because it's just so, so terrible and painful to know that Avinatan is in the hands of the worst and most cruel beast in the world, in the hands of the Hamas.”

Avinatan and Noa had only decided at the last minute to go to the music festival, arriving at 4.30 in the morning, two hours before the attack began. “At that point, someone filmed Avinatan saying to Noa, saying: ‘I'm so happy that you're not one of those girls who is afraid of a few missiles.’ “It turned out to be much more than just a few missiles,” says Ditza.

When they realised that terrorists had infiltrated the site, the couple tried to flee in their car, firstly south and then north, but, each time, were told to turn back because of terrorists in the area. After driving into a field, they abandoned the car and hid in a ditch for three to four hours. Nitza found this out from texts that Avinatan had sent to a friend.

“Avitan was telling him: ‘There's a terrible massacre here. People are being shot all over.’ He sent photographs of the area and the location, everything that could help find them, but no help came.”

After Noa was rescued, Ditza learnt that Avinatan had had the chance to escape from the festival but had chosen to stay with Noa so as “not to neglect her at the hands of the monsters”.

“I have thought about what would have happened if he had escaped, but I know he would have never forgiven himself. He wouldn’t have able to live with himself. So, he was very loyal, and I'm proud of him for that.”

For the first three months after Avinatan was taken hostage, the family heard nothing. “Then we got a call from the intelligence with an indication of life. That's what it's called. And it means just that, that he's alive.”

Since then, they have received two further signs of life. “The last one was in May, which means that since May, we don't even know if he’s alive. We hope so.”

The second of Ditza’s seven children, Avinatan, who turned 31 in captivity, is, says his mother, “very tall, very strong, very good looking and bright. Brilliant.”

An electrical engineer at a media company, he is “very, very funny and is a wonderful cook. He likes making things, but they'll be very, very special and very complicated dishes. He loves children and he loves his friends.”

Since her son was abducted, Ditza, who has family in the UK and is a UK passport holder, has devoted all her waking hours to fighting for his release, lobbying politicians both in Israel and abroad. Her talk this evening is part of a week-long visit, where she has been meeting MPs and calling for them to exert pressure to ensure a deal.

Thanking the audience for the support she has received from the UK community and the Hostages and Missing Families Forum UK, which organised the visit, she says: “I have met English, Jewish people and they are very warm and supportive. It gives us a lot of strength to know that we are not alone.”

Back in Israel, every evening since October 9, Ditza has been holding a vigil at the entrance to HaKirya, which houses the headquarters of the IDF and Tel Aviv’s government office.

“We stand there with those pictures, and we talk. We speak with all the heads of the army who go in and out and who decide about what's being done. We meet and talk with all the politicians there.”

Days after Ditza’s talk, there is news of resumed hostage negotiations. “We are trying our best to persuade our government and politicians not to sign a partial deal, because only a few hostages are then released. All of the others that are left when the IDF withdraws from Gaza will then never be freed. There will never be a chance to bring them back home. So, they must insist on signing a deal that brings all of them home.”

In the past 14 months, Ditza hasn’t returned to work, saying: “I am still a mother to my other six children but much less than before and even less so a grandmother to my nine grandchildren.”

Describing the dramatic rescue of Noa in June as “the happiest thing”, she concedes that her return “has made the pain and the absence of Avinatan even stronger”.

When she heard about Noa coming home, not wanting to overwhelm her by visiting, Ditza sent her a short message, saying : “We're so, so, so happy you are home, and we send you the greatest hug .”

But, the next day, the hospital got in touch with Ditza, saying that Noa wanted to see her. “I had an amazing meeting with her for over two hours. The medical staff who were there kept telling her that it was too tiring for her, and she should stop, but Noa said she wouldn’t stop talking until she had told us everything she knew…. and I saw what a brave, wise, devoted young woman she is.”

Noa said that as soon as she was put on the motorbike, she was driven away quickly and that was the last she saw of Avinatan. “She was moved in Gaza five times, and every time she moved, she would ask people if they had seen him, but in every place, people said they didn’t know anything about him.

“But when the monsters say that, they aren’t saying everything. The focus is to make it harder and more painful. And even if they did know, they wouldn’t say.”

Noa is now “very much engaged in the struggle to bring Avinatan back”, says Ditza, travelling to the States, South Africa and Japan to raise awareness.

As the waiting continues, Ditza holds onto the hope that she will see her son again.

“We are now in the beginning of the month of Kislev, which is the month of the light. And my son is called Avinatan Or, which, in Hebrew, means ‘Our Father has given us light.’ And now this light has been in the most extreme, extreme darkness for over 430 days, over 10,000 hours and an endless number of minutes. We hope that in this month, even tonight, they'll be home again, and the light will return to our lives.”

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