Mother of sole British hostage in Gaza pleads for help and her safe return
Mandy Damari made the plea for the return of her daughter Emily, 28.
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Your support makes all the difference.The mother of the sole British hostage still in Gaza a year after she was taken by Hamas has pleaded for her safe return, saying: “I need her back with me now, alive, before it is too late for her.”
Mandy Damari’s plea for her daughter Emily, 28, and the other hostages, was made in a recorded message played on Monday at an evening of commemoration and reflection of the October 7 attacks on Israel.
To an audience which included Chief Rabbi Sir Ephraim Mirvis and former prime minister Rishi Sunak, she said that the recent news of six hostages being murdered in the tunnels beneath Gaza is a “horror beyond imaginable”.
She added: “We have clear photographic evidence of the conditions which Emily and the other hostages are likely living in.
“It is a desperate and living hell.
“I am a mother and it goes against every grain of my being to profess that I need help with the child that I know best, the child that I brought into this world, but I do so desperately need help and I ask you for it now.
“I have always believed in the power of prayer but more importantly, the power of collective prayer.”
Ms Damari recalled that Emily was in an apartment on Kfar Aza, a peaceful kibbutz, when Hamas brought terror to her home.
Ms Damari has previously said that 64 neighbours – men, women, children and elderly – were sadistically murdered, 19 were kidnapped, 12 women were eventually released, two hostages were killed in friendly fire while trying to escape and five are still held in Gaza, including Emily.
Emily loved her dog Choocha, who was with her and was killed with a gunshot to the neck.
Ms Damari also spoke of her charismatic British-Israeli daughter as an Ed Sheeran and an Adele fan, as a Spurs supporter and as a woman with a mixed sense of classic British humour and Israeli “chutzpah”.
In her message, she said: “It’s not widely known or acknowledged that a British national has been held hostage in Gaza for one year now.
“As British Jews, it is our duty and responsibility.”
She added: “I always say that I love her to the moon and back.
“I need her back with me now, alive, before it is too late for her.
“Bring all the hostages home – the living back to their families and the murdered for a respectable burial.
“Please help us to return them all now.”
She also stated: “Our power and strength as Jewish people has never been in our numbers, but in our belief in hope and in prayer.
“We have never needed this strength and prayer more than now.
“Please help me to bring my daughter Emily home.”
Mr Sunak lit a memorial candle at the event which included Sir Oliver Dowden, the MP for Hertsmere, as a guest.