LOUISE CALLAGHAN
Father of Hamas hostage Emily Hand: I thought my girl had been killed
Thomas Hand was told his daughter had died on October 7 and spent three weeks grieving. Discovering that she is being held hostage is a different kind of agony
Emily Hand is being held hostage in a war zone
The Sunday Times
Thomas Hand woke up on his daughter’s ninth birthday with a feeling of emptiness so aching and deep it threatened to consume him. A year earlier, for Emily’s eighth birthday, he had hired a magician to perform for her and her friends on the kibbutz. This time they would have had a bouncy castle, chocolate cake and a playlist heavy on Beyoncé.
Instead, it was Emily’s 41st day in Hamas captivity.
This Irish girl with light red hair, who can do the splits and memorise a dance routine in seconds, has been taken from him and is being held hostage in a war zone by a terror group.
Hand’s situation is unfathomable, impossible to understand. Emily’s father worries whether she had a toothbrush. Where she
