War on Israel

‘Don’t kill me!’ screamed The Mail on Sunday’s chilling front-page headline on October 8th, the day after waves of Hamas gunmen stormed across Gaza’s border into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, including 364 at the music festival attended by Noa Argamani, the 25-year-old in the photograph beneath the headline.

The now-iconic shot captures a clearly petrified Argamani on the back of a terrorist’s motorbike, about to be sped across the border into Gaza to join some 250 other Israeli hostages in an unknown fate. As the world struggled to digest rapid developments after the unexpected attack, the Mail on Sunday’s powerful front page stood apart from its rivals on newsstands the following morning, capturing as it did the visceral human drama of the horrific first day of the war. Widely acclaimed, it featured prominently in Oscar-winning Israeli director and screenwriter Ari Folman’s film of hostages’ relatives sharing stories of their loved ones. 

Argamani’s family discovered she had been snatched only when they chanced on footage online – and thanked the paper for highlighting her plight. “The brutal kidnapping of festivalgoer Noa Argamani was the defining image of a terrible day, brilliantly captured by The Mail on Sunday,” said the judges.