Thomas Hand has spent weeks mourning the demise of his eight-year-old daughter, Emily.
He was advised by Israeli authorities that she was murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri, a close-knit neighborhood the place Hamas carried out a bloodbath.
But at present 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 happy,” he tells me, “that there’s a chance that she’s alive and will come out of it, no matter how broken, physically or mentally. We’re going to have to fix her. It’s going to take years, but we want her back.”
His eyes fill with tears as he says: “We want to hug her again. We want to see her dancing again, singing.”
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She was having a sleepover at a buddy’s home when Hamas stormed in and began opening fireplace within the kibbutz.
Her half-sister Nathalie reveals me video Emily filmed on the morning the assault unfolded, huddled along with her buddy and her buddy’s mom within the basement of their house.
“We’re in the safe 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.
But her father says weeks later he was advised 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 buddy and her buddy’s mom have additionally been tracked to Gaza.
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Thomas has been by a harrowing journey from mourning to now, hope. At the time of Emily’s presumed demise 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’m, I’m back in it. We’re all back in it now.”
But he’s holding on desperately to the assumption his “angel,” who he says has an “superb inside power and spirit” will return.
I ask what he will 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”
Source: information.sky.com”