Just four days after she was freed from Hamas captivity, former hostage Agam Berger attended an IDF ceremony on Monday for her younger sister Bar, who completed a military course.
Bar Berger will now serve as a mashakit tash, or noncommissioned officer responsible for service conditions — a sort of social worker for soldiers.
In video of the ceremony, Agam is seen placing a purple aiguillette, worn by a mashakit tash, on Bar’s shoulder.
“I’m proud of you,” Agam tells her younger sister, as they both shed tears.
They are then embraced by their parents, Meirav and Shlomi, and Agam’s twin sister, Lee Yam. “We did it,” Meirav exclaims.
Agam Berger was taken hostage on October 7, 2023, from the Nahal Oz IDF post near the Gaza border, where she had arrived only a day earlier to begin her role as a surveillance soldier in the Border Defense Corps.
Berger was kidnapped in her pajamas from Nahal Oz, along with six other surveillance soldiers: Ori Megidish, who was rescued by the IDF in October 2023; Noa Marciano, who was killed in captivity; and Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Liri Albag and Naama Levy, who were freed five days before Berger. During the October 7 attack, 15 surveillance soldiers were slain in Nahal Oz.
While Berger was in captivity, her twin sister, Lee Yam, completed an officer’s course, her younger sister, Bar, enlisted in the IDF, and her younger brother, Ilai, celebrated his bar mitzvah — all milestones that she missed during the 482 days she was held hostage in Gaza.
On Thursday, Berger was freed from Gaza, reuniting with her parents at an IDF facility just across the border, where they embraced her as her mother proclaimed: “We’re here and we’ll never leave you again — forever… That’s a mother’s promise.”
The three of them then flew to the Rabin Medical Center via helicopter, during which Berger held up a whiteboard reading: “I chose a path of faith and I returned through a path of faith.”
“Thank you to all the people of Israel and the heroic IDF soldiers,” she added in her note. “There’s nobody like you in the world!”
Released hostage Agam Berger and her parents Meirav, left, and Shlomi aboard a helicopter on the way to Rabin Medical Center on January 30, 2025. (IDF)
Upon arriving at the hospital in central Israel, she was engulfed by her siblings as they sobbed.
“How are you so tall!” she exclaimed to her younger brother Ilai. “You’re as tall as Dad.”
There she also reunited with the other four observation soldiers who had been released five days earlier. The four young women said they had stayed in the hospital longer in order to still be there when Agam was freed and to assist in her reacclimation.
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