She said “nobody hit us” and Hand imagines that just the strength of voices was enough to control her. “They always had a breakfast, sometimes lunch, sometimes something in the evening.”Įmily was so hungry she learned to like eating plain bread with olive oil. The hostages had enough food to survive and plenty of water to drink, Hand said. A year.”Įmily Hand embraces her father at a hospital in Israel after being released by Hamas on November 25. “Apart from the whispering, that was a punch in the guts. He had taken the family dog Johnsie to the reunion to offer and receive unconditional love in case Emily was angry at him for not coming to rescue her – a fear he has held since he learned she was alive.īut Emily told her father she thought he had been taken hostage too.Īnd when he asked her how long she thought she was gone, she replied “a year.” “The first thing she did was get a Beyoncé song on,” he said, adding that she was also smiling and was starting to laugh again. “You could just see glassy-eyed terror,” he said.īut he also saw a sign of the child he knew when he offered her his phone in the van leaving the handover. “She’d been conditioned not to make any noise.”Ī photograph of father and daughter released by the Israel Defense Forces shows a glimpse of the situation, Thomas said. I had to put my ear on her lips,” he said. “The most shocking, disturbing part of meeting her was she was just whispering, you couldn’t hear her. Like the other hostages, Emily has lost body weight and Hand said he had never seen her so pale.įirst testimonies shed light on the conditions endured by Hamas’ Israeli hostages “It was only when she stepped back that I could see her face was chiseled, like mine, whereas before it was chubby, girly, a young kid face.” “I probably squeezed her too hard,” he added, giving his view of the now iconic video of the reunion where he greets his daughter with her nickname “Emush.” It was beautiful, just like I had imagined it, running together,” Thomas said. “All of a sudden the door opened up and she just ran. There was a long delay and then word that she was with the Red Cross. He tried to hold back his excitement as he reached the base where the freed hostages were being taken. But there was also some hope.Ĭelebration with Beyoncé video and family dogĮight weeks after he had last seen his daughter, Hand was informed Emily was on the list of the second batch of hostages to be released under the temporary truce between Israel and Hamas. The waiting is awful,” he told CNN while she was a captive. And cellphones belonging to Hila’s family had been tracked to Gaza.įrom feeling that death would be a blessing, he now had all the fear of the conditions Emily was being held in. There was no blood in the house where she slept. None of the remains at Kibbutz Be’eri were identified as those of Emily. She’s dead.’ And I went, ‘Yes!’ I went, ‘Yes!’ and smiled because that is the best news of the possibilities that I knew … So death was a blessing, an absolute blessing.”īut nearly a month later, the Israeli army told him it was “highly probable” Emily was alive and a hostage of Hamas. Hand said the military had been piecing together bits of information and intelligence. He told CNN: “They just said, ‘We found Emily. Yael Shahrur Noah/APĮmily had been at a sleepover at Hila’s house when Hamas terrorists stormed Kibbutz Be’eri. Hand was trapped in his house for hours, unable to reach his daughter, as the community was ravaged – about 130 residents killed and others captured.Ībout two days later, he was told by kibbutz leaders Emily’s body had been seen. This September 2023 photo shows Emily Hand near Kibbutz Be'eri, Israel. And the separation of Hila from her mother two nights before the girls were freed – in contravention of agreements made between Hamas and Israel – was “another step of cruelty,” he said. Raaya looked after Hila and Emily like they were both her daughters, Hand said. “I want to know so much information … but you have to let them, when they are ready, come out with it.”Įmily, who turned 9 in captivity, was held with her friend Hila Rotem-Shoshani and Hila’s mother Raaya before the children were released last Saturday. “We’ll only know what she really went through as she opens up,” he told CNN. “She’s coming out slowly, little by little,” Hand said. It’s one of the details that his daughter is slowly sharing of what happened after she was kidnapped on October 7 and taken to Gaza, a place she now calls “the box.” Being pulled, dragged, pushed … under gunfire probably,” he said on Tuesday. Emily Hand had to run from house to house, forced to move by Hamas as Israeli forces attacked Gaza, her father Thomas Hand told CNN.
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