Nili Margalit

By Shlomo Maital

Nili Margalit

    Nili Margalit, 41, is a nurse, and worked at the Soroka Hospital, Beersheba, for 12 years.  She is a member of kibbutz Nir Oz, attacked by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 and was kidnapped, taken hostage to Gaza.  Her captors were not Hamas terrorists but Gazan civilians, who poured in the hundreds or more across the fence into Israel, looted, murdered and took hostages, including Nili.  In Gaza, she was ‘sold’ to Hamas by her captors, after a vigorous negotiation. 

     In the dark tunnels of Gaza, she was held together with a number of elderly Israelis,  most of whom had medical conditions and needed medication and care.  She speaks some Arabic and told her captors she was a nurse (“mumarida”) and took charge of listing the medications they needed.  She listed them, and days before they ran out, argued with Hamas to refill them…not always with success.  She demanded apparatus for measuring blood pressure and took each hostage’s blood pressure regularly.  For some, it was ‘over the roof’, she said,   220/118.   Understandable.

     One of the elderly, Tami, had severe asthma.  She needed an inhalator, which was not available.  Nili improvised one – with a spoon, hot water, and a menthol liquid.  It worked.  Some of the elderly she was with have been released;  some remain.

      What enabled her to function?   She called on her experience as a nurse in hospital.  On Ilana Dayan’s “Uvda” TV series, excerpted on CNN, she explained that in the hospital, you see people who are severely ill.  They arouse deep emotions. But, you set them aside, and just …act.  You replace feelings with constructive action. 

       Just before her release, after 50 days in the dark, she was confronted with Yarden Bibas, a male hostage also from Kibbutz Nir Oz.  Here is the account, from the Times of Israel:

      “Nili Margalit, who spent nearly 50 days in Hamas captivity, revealed that she was with Yarden Bibas when Hamas terrorists told him his wife and two young children had been killed and ordered him to film a video in which he blamed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for refusing to return their bodies to Israel.   Yarden Bibas, 34, his wife, Shiri, 32 and their two boys, Ariel, 4 and Kfir, then 9 months, were abducted from Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7. Yarden was taken to Gaza separately from the rest of his family.  [The two infants, Ariel and Kfir, have bright red hair and their photos were shown often on Israeli TV].  Margalit told Channel 12’s Uvda investigative program that Yarden Bibas was already in a poor psychological state due to worry over his family’s wellbeing and broke down upon being given the news by his captors.  She said the Hamas captors had told her she would be released later that day, only to later tell her and fellow hostage Yoram Metzger that they would have to deliver the news about the Bibas family to Yarden.  “I told Yoram, if they want to tell him such a terrible thing, let them tell him themselves.  “Let him  [Hamas terrorist] look him [Yarden] in the eyes and tell him himself. He knows Hebrew,” Margalit recalled, referring to the Hamas captor.    The Hamas member proceeded to deliver the “news” to Yarden in Arabic as Metzger translated and another Hamas member filmed the reaction, telling the broken father what to say.  A minute later, Margalit was swept away by her captors, and she was released later that evening.”

      Nili’s home in Nir Oz was burned and destroyed.  She now lives in a temporary apartment in a suburb of the southern city of Kiryat Gat, with her boxer, Nachi, who somehow survived the attack.  She intends to return to work in Soroka Hospital, where many of the wounded were brought and cared for, after a period of recovery.

      Some 136 hostages are still held by Hamas.