Israel appeals to Chinese president to help free hostage Noa Argamani
- Benjamin Netanyahu asks Xi Jinping to intervene personally to secure the release of woman captured during Hamas’ October 7 attack
- Argamani’s mother, who was born in China, is battling brain cancer
Israel has asked Chinese President Xi Jinping to help secure the release of an Israeli hostage whose mother is a former Chinese national.
“I told the ambassador: I would like you to tell Xi Jinping that, beyond the protocols and rules, there is a girl here with a Chinese mother, and I personally ask that you personally involve yourself in her case, because her mother is not only pleading for Noa’s life, but also for her own,” Netanyahu said, adding that Argamani’s mother was battling cancer.
Argamani, 26, an engineering student from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in southern Israel, was initially identified by the Israeli embassy in China as a Beijing-born Chinese-Israeli woman.
Her mother, Liora Argamani, who was born in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, later told the Post that her daughter was “not Chinese”, “does not have a Chinese passport” and had never lived in China.
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Liora Argamani also said China had “very good reasons to refuse” interfering, given that neither she nor her daughter were Chinese nationals.
Netanyahu said on Monday that Cai “assured” him that the message had been delivered, adding that “in my years as prime minister … I cannot remember another time when I summoned the Chinese ambassador – they usually arrive of their own accord”.
Meanwhile, human rights groups have called for the release of more than 8,000 Palestinians held in jails, many without charge.
According to data from the Palestinian Prisoners’ Club, an advocacy group that keeps a tally of detainees from the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, there were about 7,800 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails, the highest total for at least 14 years.
Kadura Fares, the head of the Palestinian Commission on Prisoners, said Israel used administrative detention, inherited from the British mandate regime and prohibited by international law, as a tool of revenge against Palestinians.
Fares said 80 per cent of those detained after October 7 were arrested without charges, and Palestinian prisoners were “subjected to brutal interrogation, hunger, cold and torture every hour of the day”, which “most frequently” led to death.
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As of Monday, 20,674 Palestinians – around 70 per cent of them children and women – had been killed and 54,536 wounded in the Israeli attack on Gaza, according to the territory’s Health Ministry.
Israel has defended its actions as self-defence in response to Hamas’ attack on October 7, which is believed to have killed around 1,200 Israelis. China said Israel’s actions went beyond self-defence.
Israel says 129 hostages remain in the Palestinian territory after more than 100 were released. According to an NBC News analysis, it is possible that Noa Argamani was abducted by random individuals or another group and is not in Hamas’ custody.
Liora Argamani released a video in November calling on US President Joe Biden and the Red Cross to bring back her daughter. “I have cancer, brain cancer. I don’t know how long I have left. I wish for the chance to see my Noa, at home,” she said.
Families of hostages heckled Netanyahu as he addressed the Knesset on Monday, chanting “Now! Now!” as the leader promised “a long war that’s not close to ending”.
