Irish-Israeli girl Emily Hand has said “I should have just stayed at home” on the day of the October 7th Hamas attacks, in an interview to be broadcast just over a year after she was kidnapped from Israel.
The nine-year-old was held hostage by militants in Gaza for 50 days after being captured in the Hamas attack on Kibbutz Be’eri.
Emily, who was eight at the time, was at a sleepover at the home of her friend, 13-year-old Hila Rotem-Shoshani, when she was taken alongside Hila and her mother, Raaya Rotem.
“I should have just stayed at home, no doubt about it,” she says, in footage from One Day in October, a documentary detailing the attack.
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“When they arrived, we just opened up because if we held the door, they’d shoot and the bullets would hit us,” she says in an interview due to be broadcast on Channel 4 on Wednesday.
“They threatened us with a knife. If we resist, they’ll kill us,” she added.
In a separate interview within the documentary, Hila said she tried to comfort Emily and explain “what was going on” as the attack began.
“I said: ‘There’s no way they’ll come to ours out of all the houses in the kibbutz.’”
Hila’s mother, Raaya, recalled “about five to seven terrorists” who arrived at her home.
“They grabbed me by the shirt and said: ‘You’re coming to Gaza,’” she said, adding that the three were put in the back of a car and witnessed “corpses everywhere”.
Emily recalled being covered with a blanket while crouched over in the back of the car, “so that we won’t see and maybe run away, so we won’t know the way back”.
The three were eventually taken “through the fence towards Gaza”.
Noting that gunfire could be heard outside, her father, Tom Hand, who is originally from Dún Laoghaire in Dublin, said he would have been killed if he had left his house.
He recalled being unable to speak to his daughter on October 7th, as his phone was dead and there was no electricity but hoped Emily was in one of the “lucky houses”.
“I couldn’t protect Emily that day,” he said.
He said he is still learning new information from his daughter about the period she was held captive.
“Psychiatrists have told me I can’t investigate or interrogate. I only get to know whatever snippets come out, like last night in the car she just told me that she saw at least 12 bodies at the fence, people that she knows dead at the side of the road,” he said.
Mr Hand said their kibbutz had about 1,200 members before the attack.
“We lost 100 people, almost 10 per cent of our community, dead, wiped out,” he said, adding that if his daughter is not afraid to return to where she was kidnapped, they will move back.
“If the people of the south don’t go back to the south, Hamas has won and that’s not going to happen. I’m going back,” he said.
Mr Hand had initially been incorrectly informed his daughter had been killed during the Hamas attacks in which 1,200 people died, before later being told she was in fact believed to be alive and among the hostages.
Emily was released from captivity in late November 2023 as part of a prisoner exchange between her captors and the Israeli government.
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