Adi, the mother of IDF surveillance soldier Cpl. Noa Marciano, who was abducted on October 7 from the Nahal Oz outpost and murdered about two months later at Shifa Hospital in Gaza, spoke Thursday morning about the killing of Hamas terrorist Mohammed Habil, who killed her daughter.
“At my last meeting with the security forces about a month ago, I was told that everyone connected to Noa’s abduction had been eliminated and that there was one person left — and that they would get to him as well,” the bereaved mother told the ynet studio.
Habil was killed Wednesday in an airstrike in a joint IDF-Shin Bet operation in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, in response to gunfire in which a reserve officer was seriously wounded overnight between Tuesday and Wednesday in the Yellow Line area in the northern Gaza Strip. In recent years, Abdullah Abu Rayala and Naim Ghul, Hamas operatives responsible for holding Noa in captivity, also were killed in Gaza. Three months before Ghul was eliminated, another operative who had held the slain surveillance soldier was killed.
On Thursday morning, Noa’s mother visited her daughter's grave. “When I get there, the first thing I do is ask for forgiveness — forgiveness that we didn’t manage to bring her home,” Adi said. “I have a kind of ritual where I open my playlist, and the first song that comes up is a song by ‘The Blue Elephant.’ We have a nice video of Noa singing it, and it accompanies me in those moments when I come there.”
“I feel that something was done," she says of the elimination of the terrorist. "I don’t know if it’s closure, but it’s justice for what Noa went through in Gaza during the days she was there. According to official testimony we received, an hour after Noa arrived at the hospital in Gaza, they took her into a side room. At that moment, the terrorist doctor decided to inject air into her vein, which is an act that stops the heart. For me, it’s a kind of relief to think that perhaps in those moments Noa believed they were going to save her.”
She continued: “I want to say thank you to the security forces, to the soldiers — men and women — who are on the ground every day and risk their lives so that we can truly be safe here. Today I am traveling to the Gaza border area to plant a tree together with the families of the surveillance soldiers and operations room soldiers, and the other fallen from Nahal Oz. We hope to hear more reports like this of the elimination of people who murdered Noa’s friends.”
Eyal Eshel, the father of Sgt. Roni Eshel, who was killed in the October 7 massacre at the Nahal Oz outpost, commented on the announcement by Supreme Court Vice President Justice Noam Sohlberg regarding the panel that will hear petitions to the High Court of Justice on the establishment of a state commission of inquiry into the failures of October 7. “I think this is a panel that is good for all of us, a panel that will sit down and study the material in the best possible way,” the bereaved father said.
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Eyal Eshel, the father of Sgt. Roni Eshel, who was killed in the October 7 massacre at the Nahal Oz outpost
(Photo: Yair Sagi)
After Supreme Court President Justice Yitzhak Amit transferred the decision on the panel composition to his deputy “for the sake of propriety,” Justice Sohlberg ruled that the panel would include Supreme Court Justices David Mintz, Alex Stein, Yael Wilner, Yehiel Kasher, Khaled Kabub and Ofer Grosskopf.
Eshel, a member of the October Council, which brings together more than 1,500 bereaved families, former hostages and their families, said: “Sohlberg did something commendable here. He chose a panel that is diverse in outlook and lines of thinking, a panel with a fairly clear institutional leaning. Activism won’t erupt there; they will study and understand. I think Grosskopf and Kabub will support a state commission of inquiry, Mintz and Stein will oppose it, which leaves Sohlberg, Wilner and Kasher to decide. I trust them.”
He added: “I truly believe there are judges in Jerusalem. The government is trying to spin us, but I think that in the end a state commission of inquiry will indeed be established. Too many fallen are no longer here to be the witnesses who could have told how we actually arrived at that Saturday of October 7."