American Hamas hostages survived thanks to uplifting Louis Armstrong song ‘What a Wonderful World’
The American mother-and-daughter Hamas hostages who were the first to be freed after the Oct. 7 attack relied on the inspirational Louis Armstrong song “What a Wonderful World” to endure the final weeks of their harrowing captivity.
Judith Raanan, 59, and her now-18-year-old daughter Natalie were visiting family at the Nahal Oz kibbutz near the Gaza border when a rocket fell through their house.
Realizing an attack by Hamas was underway, Raanan had just minutes to warn her teenage daughter what was about to occur, she recounted Wednesday during NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.”
“Well, I simply said, honey, do you remember how you see in the movies, those guys that have all this military artillery and stuff that come with guns and all? So that’s what’s gonna come through the door,” Raanan said.
“So don’t panic. Just you know, don’t be afraid.”
The mother-daughter pair were ushered out of the home at gunpoint and zip-tied before they were marked through the desert to the Gaza border and then to a Hamas-run hospital.
Raanan and Natalie — who have dual American-Israeli citizenship — were among roughly 200 hostages who were abducted during the Oct. 7 massacre that saw 1,200 Israelis killed.
“It’s like a Russian roulette. You don’t know if you’re gonna be dead or alive,” Raanan said.
They spent two weeks in Hamas custody in fear that they would be raped or killed, possibly both, a terrorizing thought that Natalie repeatedly verbalized.
Despite the seemingly hopeless situation, Raanan knew she had to be strong for her young daughter — and pointed to Armstrong’s iconic jazz song as a point of inspiration.
“And she goes, ‘Mom, I don’t think that this is appropriate. This is not so wonderful right now,'” Raanan said.
“And I said this is appropriate. You are my Jewish Queen; you are my princess.”
The pair were freed on Oct. 20 in a Hamas deal with the Qatari government, marking the first of several waves of hostage releases.
An estimated 100 others are believed to still be in Hamas custody.
