Thomas Hand has spent weeks mourning the dying of his eight-year-old daughter, Emily.
He was informed by Israeli authorities that she was murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri, a close-knit neighborhood the place Hamas carried out a bloodbath.
However in the present day he’s sitting on the balcony of a lodge overlooking the {Dead} Sea, reacting to the information his daughter is now believed to be a hostage in Gaza.
“We’re very, very comfortable,” he tells me, “that there is a likelihood that she’s alive and can come out of it, irrespective of how damaged, bodily or mentally. We’ll have to repair her. It’ll take years, however we wish her again.”
His eyes fill with tears as he says: “We need to hug her once more. We need to see her dancing once more, singing.”
Israel-Gaza latest: Gaza becoming ‘graveyard for children’
Emily Hand is believed to have been kidnapped and brought to Gaza
She was having a sleepover at a good friend’s home when Hamas stormed in and began opening hearth within the kibbutz.
Her half-sister Nathalie reveals me video Emily filmed on the morning the assault unfolded, huddled together with her good friend and her good friend’s mom within the basement of their dwelling.
“We’re within the secure room with our toys,” she says, in a video filmed as they tried to cover.
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Initially, it was presumed she had been killed and that her physique had been recognized.
However her father says weeks later he was informed there had been a mistake in identification and that there have been no traces of Emily’s DNA discovered.
Thomas says two cellphones belonging to her good friend and her good friend’s mom have additionally been tracked to Gaza.
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Thomas has been by means of a harrowing journey from mourning to now, hope. On the time of Emily’s presumed dying he felt some aid, comforted by the notion she wouldn’t be struggling by the hands of Hamas any longer.
Now, he wrestled with picturing her being held in a tunnel. “I went from feeling the nightmare is over to, okay, I am, I am again in it. We’re all again in it now.”
The eight-year-old on a seashore
Emily taking part in on a swing
However he’s holding on desperately to the assumption his “angel,” who he says has an “superb inner energy and spirit” will return.
I ask what he’ll do if she does. “I will not let her out of my sight,” he says as he weeps, “I simply need to maintain her and by no means let go”