Hamas kidnap victim Emily Hand recovering 'much faster' than dad ever dreamed of
The nine-year-old Irish-Israeli hostage was left too afraid to speak and physically weak after being abducted on October 7 and held for weeks by the Islamic terror group
Hamas kidnap victim Emily Hand is recovering "much faster than we could have dreamed" after her 50-day ordeal, her father has revealed.
The nine-year-old Irish-Israeli hostage was left too afraid to speak and physically weak after being abducted on October 7 and held for weeks by the Islamic terror group.
The youngster was on a sleepover with her friend Hila Rotem, 13, and Hila’s mother, Raya, 54, when they were kidnapped by the terrorists.
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In captivity she was shipped from house to house in war-torn Gaza and faced near starvation surviving on a quarter of a pitta bread a day and lost half a stone while being held prisoner.
When she was finally released in a prisoner exchange on November 25 she was seriously malnourished and because of the horrors she witnessed she could not speak.
But her father Thomas Hand said little Emily is improving every day and getting her voice back.
He told The Sun: "She’s resilient. She’s a very powerful girl with a lot of inner strength. She was weak, she’d been starved, basically for 50 days.
"Her voice was less than a whisper. It was almost non-existent because Hamas had threatened her with a knife, all of them with a knife if they raised their voices above a whisper.
"So that I thought was going to be a very difficult thing to get over.
"But the recovery has been much, much faster than we could have dreamed of."
Mr Hand, who is critical of the Irish Government’s decision to recognise the State of Palestine, said Emily has been using therapies such as horse riding to get her confidence back.
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