Since her abduction, Liora has participated in the fight for the return of her daughter Noa. Even when her situation was difficult, she appeared for interviews, wrote letters to world leaders and called for every effort that would lead to the release of her daughter. In her last interview, Liora described the unceasing hope that her daughter would return in the shadow of her deteriorating condition, and asked to address the world leaders.
“How much I miss you,” said Liora in an interview with Yaakov, Noa’s father, ahead of the Seder night which they had to spend without their only daughter Noa. “The situation is not simple.” Liora asked for help from US President Joe Biden: “I would like him to help us as much as possible, but I know it’s not a simple issue.”
In December, Liora wrote a letter to Biden, in which she asked for his help in releasing her daughter. “I am terminally ill with stage 4 brain cancer,” she wrote in a letter that echoed in many media around the world. “All I ask for, before I separate from my family forever, is the opportunity to hug my daughter, my only child, for the last time.”
Noa said that even while she was in Gaza, she never stopped thinking about her mother’s condition. “The thing that occupied me the most in captivity was the concern for my parents,” she said in a video that was broadcast at a rally for the abductees. “It is a great privilege to be by my mother’s side after eight months of uncertainty. It is a great privilege to know that my parents are surrounded by so many good people.”
Liora, 61 years old, has been battling brain cancer for several years. She came to Israel from China more than 30 years ago, for a short period as a student at the Negev Research Center. In Be’er Sheva she met Jacob and the two fell in love, Noa is their only daughter.