Freed child captive has moments of joy, as family yearns for normalcy

(JNS) — “She’d rather sleep anywhere else than inside a bomb shelter, because that’s where she was kidnapped from. That’s where Hamas burst in and took her and Hila,” Tom Hand, the father of former captive Emily Hand, told JNS on Thursday. 

On Oct. 7, 2023, Emily Hand was sleeping over at her friend Hila Rotem Shoshani’s house in Kibbutz Be’eri, five miles from the Gaza Strip, when Hamas launched its assault, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages including 40 children, among them Emily, 8, and Hila, 13. 

Authorities at the kibbutz told Tom that his daughter had likely been murdered. The family’s plight went viral after a distraught Tom said in an interview that his first reaction to the news that his daughter had been murdered instead of captured had been relief.

However, roughly a month later, the IDF confirmed that Emily’s body was not among the remains of some 120 people killed in Be’eri, and that no traces of blood had been found in the house where she was staying.

Moreover, cell phones belonging to members of the family with whom she had been staying were tracked to Gaza. 

On Nov. 17, 2023, Emily spent her nineth birthday in captivity. Just over a week later, on Nov. 26, she was released after spending 50 days in Gaza, as was her friend Hila, as part of a weeklong ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that freed 105 hostages (81 Israelis, 23 Thais and one Filipino), primarily women and children, in return for 240 terrorists.

“I was spending a week in England, there was a massive rally at which I spoke, and then we heard whispers that there was going to be a prisoner-for-hostage swap and we got on the next plane out with our fingers crossed,” Tom told JNS. 

He made it back to Israel and was staying at the David Dead Sea hotel in Ein Bokek with the rest of the refugees from Be’eri when the army called to tell him that Emily was on the list of the hostages to be released by Hamas. 

“Immediately, it’s hope. You’re ecstatic just at the possibility of being reunited while understanding that anything could go wrong. Hamas could change the conditions, change their mind, and so could our own government,” Tom said. “Anything could have gone wrong at any point from the moment they called me till the handover 24 hours later. You really suppress your excitement and hope and pray for the best.”

As part of its psychological warfare strategy, Hamas delayed Emily’s release by six hours. 

“It was torment, terror. It was a hard 24 hours,” a tearful Tom told JNS. 

“When we got her back, she was very white, she had not seen the sun in over a month. She was very quiet, afraid to make any kind of noise out of her mouth. At that point, we did not know how traumatized, terrorized or broken she was,” he continued. “Thank God, people talk about the resilience of children, she is a resilient one. I know other kids that have been brought back, and they are still in a bad way, they don’t leave their room, they don’t mix with their friends.”

Hamas still holds 63 hostages captive in Gaza, including Kfir Bibas, who spent his first birthday in the Strip, and his now 5-year-old brother Ariel, who were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz along with their parents Shiri and Yarden.

“There is still a baby, a child and women. My best friend, Lianne Sharabi, and her two daughters were slaughtered on October 7. They took her husband, Eli, we are praying for him to come back. We are praying for all of them to come back,” Tom said.

“It’s inhumane, it shouldn’t be part of any kind of war, but that’s how they operate, they hide behind civilians, they have no moral standards,” he continued.

“We are hoping for [captives from] Be’eri, there are at least three that are still alive, we lost many there, we don’t just want the hostages that are alive back, we want the deceased, to bury them respectfully.”

After nearly a year in the hotel at the Dead Sea, Tom resettled with Emily and the rest of his community in temporary housing in Kibbutz Hatzerim, about five miles west of Beersheva. 

Tom said the government has provided a lot of help, not just in the form of housing, for the residents of rampaged towns and villages, but also psychological assistance. 

While Emily seems to have gone back to her joyful self, going to school, playing, dancing and making new friends as well as reconnecting with old ones, Tom told JNS that she still gets triggered. 

“If she hears loud Arabic, she’s not so comfortable,” he said. 

“Two nights ago, she was on her bicycle with her friends in the evening. All of a sudden, she heard gunfire and they all just flew off on the bikes as fast as they could. Unfortunately, as they went around the corner, Emily fell off her bicycle,” Tom recounted.

Hatzerim, he explained, is close to an Israeli Air Force base that has three firing ranges. Hearing gunfire is not unusual.

“Somebody called me, I made my way there. She was pretty shook up, pretty white. When I asked her what happened and why she was riding so fast, she told me about the gunfire. There will always be big triggers,” Tom said.

As of now, about 150 people have returned to Be’eri. 

“If I didn’t have Emily, if she hadn’t gone through what she went through, I would have moved back there months ago. It’s mainly older couples with grown-up kids, nobody is there with young kids, the memories are too vivid,” he explained. 

“We haven’t started rebuilding yet. We are still in destroying and dismantling mode, getting rid of all the houses that were irreparable. Until the demolition is finished, we can’t even start reconstruction,” he said.

Be’eri is the only home Tom has known since he moved to Israel from Ireland in 1992.

“I came at the age of 32 to be a volunteer on the kibbutz, worked the land, I loved it immediately. The weather is great and the people are spiky on the outside but really sweet. I met a girl, got married, had a couple of children,” he said.

While Emily’s mother died when she was just over two years old, Tom’s ex-wife, Narkis, helped raise Emily. Before Emily was born, Tom and Narkis had two children, Aiden, 29, and Natali, 27.

Hamas terrorists murdered Narkis during the Oct. 7 massacre.

For Tom, returning to Be’eri full-time will depend on a change in the political leadership in Israel and on the military progress in Gaza.

“To me, the best solution would be a global coalition composed of the United Nations, Israel, American forces, Egyptian and Jordanian forces looking after the area and making sure Hamas can’t terrorize their own citizens, can’t get bigger and attack us yet again, which they have vowed to do,” he said.

“We cannot allow this to happen. The world cannot allow this to happen again. If I feel secure enough to go back, Emily will want to go back. We would be going back en masse. All of our friends would be going as well, it would not just be the two of us. That’s how I hope to see it,” he added. 

Tom shared a message of hope with the people of Israel and the families of hostages. 

“We’ve gone through and we continue to go through absolute terrible times, not just here in Israel but the reaction of the rest of the world. We have to continuously fight for our own existence, for a better government and the return of our hostages both those alive and the deceased,” he said.

“We have to stay strong and positive although it’s almost impossible. I just hope the rest of the families are as lucky as I am in the end,” Tom said.