Former hostage Noa Argamani and author Noa Tishby spoke about anti-Israel activism and antisemitism at the Milken Institute Global Conference on Wednesday, with Argamani saying that an anti-Israel performance at the Coachella music festival “broke her heart” and Tishby arguing that antisemitism “is nothing short of a cultural conflict.”

Argamani, who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from the Nova music festival on Oct. 7, 2023, said that she had intended to attend Coachella last month, where the Irish band Kneecap led the crowd in chants of “Free, Free Palestine” and displayed messages on the stage that read, “Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people,” “It is being enabled by the US government who arm and fund Israel despite their war crimes” and “Fuck Israel. Free Palestine.”

“It’s really hard and breaking my heart to see that this is still happening,” Argamani said of the event. “I’m like all of the people that come for Coachella, and we are the same people. It could happen to each one of us, and if people will not share sympathy [for] each other, for all these people just going to festivals of love, peace and community, that’s what we need to do. We didn’t choose to be kidnapped, we didn’t choose to be born in Israel. We just want to go to a festival to dance and have fun.”

Argamani’s partner, Avinatan Or, was also kidnapped and is still in Hamas captivity. Argamani said that she had seen “a sign of life recently” from Or and that “we know that he’s still alive and waiting for us to save him.” There were reports in March that one hostage who returned in the recent ceasefire and hostage-release deal had claimed to see Or while in captivity, though Argamani said on Wednesday that “none of the hostages that [have] been released can share a lot of information about him, none of the hostages saw him.”

Asked about being recognized as one of Time magazine’s 100 most influential people of 2025, Argamani said receiving awards and accolades for her advocacy on behalf of the hostages “is not my honor. It’s an honor for all the hostages that [have been] released and the hostages that [have been] in captivity all those days.”

“It’s really hard to be there [o]n the red carpet and to know that I’m doing that for the hostages that [are] still in the tunnels of Gaza while we see people celebrate [my] recognition,” she said. “I’m thinking about the hostages all the time, and it’s really hard to come from the tunnels of Hamas to this point of life.”

Speaking after Argamani, author Noa Tishby expounded on the threat antisemitism poses to America and the West. “This is not Israel’s problem. It’s not the problem of the Jews. It’s not even just the problem of the Middle East. What’s happening right now is nothing short of a cultural conflict, that if we don’t wake up in the West to understand that that is what’s happening, we’re going to be screwed and not too far down the line,” she said. 

Coming from Israel to the United States, she “understood that there is a bigger problem here, and that problem is called jihadism. That problem means that there are some mothers that are happy if their child goes and kills Noa Argamani’s friends at a party.”

Tishby argued that people who call this perspective Islamophobic “are gaslighting you” and that countries including Saudi Arabia, Jordan and others “in the Middle East that outlawed the Muslim Brotherhood, that outlawed Al Jazeera … understand that that culture is dangerous for them, too.” 

The author also said that the college campus anti-Israel protest movement “is the tip of the iceberg of a worldwide war that has been waged against us for 30 years” and that “Israel’s enemies understood that they can’t take her down militarily” so they focused on influencing college campuses “because they wanted to go after the hearts and minds.”

Tishby named American Muslims for Palestine as the driving force behind the campus disruptions rather than Students for Justice in Palestine which, she said, though anti-Israel students often affiliate with it, “doesn’t actually exist. There’s no organization. It’s not a 501(c)3, there’s no group, there’s no offices.” 

“All these organizations need to be outlawed. All of these names need to be exposed, and people need to understand that this is fundamentally anti-American,” she argued. “We’re just a pawn. There’s a bigger picture here. There’s a bigger game.”