But at night she is struggling. He said: “Last night she cried until her face was red and blotchy, she couldn’t stop. She didn’t want any comfort, I guess she’s forgotten how to be comforted. She went under the covers of the bed, the quilt, covered herself up and quietly cried.”
As with many of the hostages, her story is coming out slowly. “We’ll only know what she went through as she opens up,” said Thomas. “I want to know so much information but you have to let them come out with it when they are ready.”
Emily Hand (Photo: )[Missing Credit]
Emily was kidnapped alongside her friend Hila Rotem-Shoshani — at whose house she had been staying when the terrorists attacked — and Hila’s mother, Raaya. Emily was with the two of them throughout her captivity. While Hila has been released, Raaya is still a hostage. The psychological torture continues for everyone.
But while Hamas instructed all of the hostages to smile as they were released — down the barrel of a gun — the truth of what they endured is, obviously, not a happy one. And while there is relief that they are home, there is no joy when almost all of them have loved ones still in captivity. And then there is the news of what they have come back to.
Thomas had to tell Emily that his ex-wife Narkis, who had helped Thomas bring up his youngest daughter on Kibbutz Be’eri when her own mother died of cancer — Emily’s her “second mother” — had been killed by Hamas terrorists and that her home had gone.
She is far from the only hostage who have returned home to find their loved ones were murdered.
Noam and Alma Or, 17 and 13-year-old siblings, were released together on Saturday. Their uncle Ahal Besorai described how dreams of seeing their mother again had helped get them through their ordeal but, “this dream had been shattered by the fact that she was murdered on October 7”. Their father, Dror, remains missing and is believed to be captive in Gaza.
While Hamas is meant to be showing the Red Cross “proof of life” of all the hostages remaining as part of the agreement, they have still not kept to it.
Those who were hostages are not being questioned by Israeli intelligence yet, such is the trauma they have endured. Under the advice of psychologists, their families are waiting for them to natrually open up about what pain they went through.
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Eitan Yahalomi got out on Monday[Missing Credit]
Slowly, slowly they are speaking. And the stories that are coming out are horrendous — a far cry from the “humane” treatment Hamas is trying to present to the world.
Twelve-year-old Eitan Yahalomi, who was also released on Monday evening, was forced to watch footage of Hamas militants going on their rampage as they killed people in his community, his aunt Devora Cohen told French television.
“The Hamas terrorists forced him to watch films of the horrors, the kind that no one wants to see, they forced him to watch them,” she said. Eitan’s father Ohad remains captive in Gaza while his mother and two sisters managed to escape.
His aunt also described how he was attacked by Gazan civilians with sticks when he was brought into the Hamas-run territory. And he told his aunt how every time a child in captivity cried, they were threatened with a gun “to shut them up”.
All the hostages are initially flown to hospitals to be checked over. All the women still menstruating are given pregnancy tests. All of the hostages have lost weight — between 10lb and 50lb — and are malnourished, exhausted and traumatised, according to the doctors who have seen them.
Anxious moments: Baby Kfir Bibas, who is feared dead (Photo: )[Missing Credit]
They were forced to survive mainly on a diet of rice and pitta bread — with no vegetables or fruit. The lucky ones got to see two hours of daylight a day — others spent their entire time underground or even in total darkness.
Most were not given showers the entire time they were there, and some only changed clothes shortly before their release. They either slept in beds crammed together, on the floor or on plastic chairs.
Many of those who were suffering from chronic diseases when they went in have received no treatment. Tali Amano, whose 84-year-old mother Elma Avraham was imprisoned for 52 days, has described how she begged the Red Cross to ensure that her mother — who has thyroid disease, heart disease and autoimmune disease — was given the right medication.
Her request was denied by the charity.
Speaking on Tuesday night at the Israeli Embassy, Limor Sella-Broyde, who had seven members of her family abducted and three of them murdered, said that the six who were returned this week — matriarch Shoshan Haran, 67, Adi Shoham, 38, her children Nave and Yahel, 8 and 3 and other cousins Sharon Avigdori, 52, and Noam, 12 — had barely spoken about what they went through.
“They are broken, it is like they are not there,” she says.
“Some of them were together and they were also helping others from their community like the girl Abigail, a young child who lost both her parents. They feel so fragile. We are just getting fragments of information from them. It is like there was an initial adrenaline rush and then a crash.”
The Jewish world recoiled with horror as the military wing of Hamas, Al Qassam Brigades, announced on Wednesday that the youngest of those taken, ten-month-old Kfir Bibas, had been “killed in an Israeli airstrike”.
Kfir was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz along with his father Yarden, 34, mother Shiri, 32, and brother Ariel, 4. Kfir was just 9 months old when he was captured.
Ada Sagi, with her son Noam (Photo: )[Missing Credit]