Emily Hand is doing incredibly well two years after being snatched by militants but her father says there are times when the horror comes flooding back
Freed Hamas hostage Emily Hand has made extraordinary progress since she was snatched by Hamas gunmen exactly two years ago. On the second anniversary of the horrific terror attacks Emily, now ten years old, is flourishing at school. She’s even taken up surfing and skydiving.
But her dad Thomas – in an exclusive interview with the Mirror – reveals his darling daughter still bears some scars of her horrendous ordeal. He will return to his kibbutz to “have a beer” with his dear British friend Lianne Sharabi who was killed on October 7th. But it will be at her graveside.Thomas said: “When I look back, I can see that Emily’s progress has been amazing.
“For many weeks she wouldn’t let me out of her sight. She refused to go to school again. But gradually things changed. She got therapy and got to ride a pony and a horse. The psychologists said that to ride the animals would help her overcome her feeling that she had lost control of her life. So on the horse she got back some feeling of control.
“She has been skydiving recently and she’s learned to surf.
“I also took her on a boat, fishing. ‘Hands Reaching Out’ took her and other ex-hostage kids to Orlando Disney and she’s excited they are going back there again soon. She went happily on the Big Wheel and the helter-skelter.
“Emily has no fear about those sorts of things. What else, I suppose, could scare her after she’s experienced being captured by violent men with guns, and kept hostage for 50 days?
“But Emily is not completely over everything. She sometimes comes in to my bedroom in the night and I find her in the morning alongside, sleeping in my bed. She will play out with her friends until it’s getting dark, but as she gets scared as it becomes dark I have to collect her or I have to stay on the phone with her as she rides back, even though it’s just a couple of minutes away.”
Emily was held inside Gaza for 49 days but she was released and reunited with Thomas, a Dublin born Londoner who moved to Israel to work in a printing shop at Be’eri kibbutz.
Thomas said: “Emily doesn’t visit the other ex-hostage kids. But she does meet up with Noa Argamani, that woman you see on a motorbike being kidnapped. Emily had been with her in Gaza. They’ve formed a bond for life.
“Noa’s boyfriend is still there. The most awful thing is – not knowing living in hope and terror until the best or the worst news comes out. Emily will feel Noa’s pain and be devastated if Noa’s boyfriend does not come back alive.
“In eight years, she will go into the army I’m sure she will rise up through the ranks. She has that steely determination.
He said: “It’s also been a huge ordeal for me. A few days after the October 7th onslaught, the Kibbutz leader told me, with a psychologist present: Emily is dead. I said: ‘Thank God yes’, as I knew what Hamas were capable of. I thought she was better off dead.
“The murder of her ‘acting’ mother Narkiss, killed on the same kibbutz on October 7, was unknown to Emily till after she got back. I had to tell her, in the hospital. Emily took a sharp intake of breath, her eyes popped, and she fell silent. There was no comforting her. She pulled up the bed covers up over her and cried her eyes out.
“For several weeks after she got out, she was only able to whisper. As we drove from the Gaza border in a car to a hospital in Tel Aviv, I gave her some headphones and she listened on my iPhone to her hero Taylor Swift. But she would not song along, only whisper the words and the tune.
“Later she explained that the people who held her captive put a big knife on the table and said if she made even the slightest noise they would use it to cut her throat.”
He added: “I plan to go back to my kibbutz Beeri today. There’ll be a ceremony. My house is still there but the house of Narkiss and the house from which Emily and her friend and her mum’s friend were captured, has been bulldozed – they were unfixable.
“One day we will definitely go back, with Emily, to live on the kibbutz. But only if we go en masse. Emily would need her kibbutz friends to be with her. Today I will be remembering my best pal on the kibbutz, Lianne. She was as British as they come, even though she married a lovely Israeli from our kibbutz.
“That’s Eli Sharabi, who came back after 491 days, looking like a skeleton, to discover his wife and both daughters had been murdered. Eli has made an amazing recovery. His brother Yossi was also taken captive and, after a sick Hamas circulated a sick video of him, he was murdered in January 2024. We’ve still not got his body back.
“I think I’ll go today and have a beer with Lianne – like we used to do. For old time’s sake. Except this time it’ll have to be at Lianne’s grave. She’s lying there, with a heart made from blue Bristol stone, along with her two teenage daughters, also British passport-holders.
“Lianne was ‘one of the best’ and I will be smiling as well, because Lianne was the funniest person I ever met. I think I’ll leave a bottle of beer on her grave too. She’d appreciate that!”