Helping hands: An inside view of life after Hamas captivity

Kibbutz Hatzerim, which is just west of Beersheba and best known for its drip-irrigation plant, houses the newly established quarter for survivors of Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre of more than 130 of Kibbutz Be’eri’s 1,071 residents. Emily Hand and her Dublin-born father, Thomas, 64, are among the 200 traumatized refugees living there. In 2026, the residents hope to move back en masse to their rebuilt homes in the devastated community alongside the Gaza Strip.

“We’re still in the stage of demolishing the houses beyond repair,” Thomas Hand tells The Jerusalem Report.

Some vegetation has been planted around the new temporary bungalows at Hatzerim, and the site is beginning to resemble a lush kibbutz neighborhood. But little else is normal.

The Hands marked the anniversary of Emily’s release from imprisonment in the tunnels of Gaza on November 26. A week earlier, the Irish-Israeli girl celebrated her 10th birthday.

Thomas no longer allows his daughter to be interviewed by the media. The probing questions she faced raised horrific memories of captivity in hell that she is still struggling to process, he says. “She started to feel uncomfortable with the questions. So, I said, ‘That’s it.’”

Indeed, after a year of various therapies, such as seeing a psychologist weekly, horseback riding, and puppy love with their pooch Johnsey, Emily remains a textbook case of PTSD. “She’s living day to day, enjoying every day,” her father says with a dash of optimism.

They moved to their desert home in Hatzerim shortly before Rosh Hashanah, and Emily started the new school year there. Before then, they had been sheltered at Kibbutz Ein Gedi’s hotel by the Dead Sea.

Like his daughter, Thomas is struggling to adjust to the new reality. In the harrowing days after October 7, he was initially informed that his daughter had been murdered. After a month, that assessment was revised to missing.

After more torturous uncertainty, she was then declared a hostage. She was finally released in a swap for Hamas gunmen and other terrorists.

The Hand household is still decorated with balloons from Emily’s recent birthday party.

Among the guests were fellow hostages Noa Argamani, Ra’aya Rotem, and Hila Rotem Shoshani, who surprised Emily with a cake and candles. Argamani, who had been held hostage with Hand, was rescued on June 8, after 245 days in captivity.

Thomas says that Emily is adjusting “incredibly well.” But then he contextualizes what that means. “She still sleeps with me. Usually in my bed. She was captured from a mamad [fortified room]. And that’s a trigger.”

His conversation is punctuated by sighs and tears. “Don’t mind me. It’s just part of the process.”

He considers himself “very lucky, very stupid” – lucky to have survived October 7 physically unscathed; stupid because he had put his head out the window to smoke a cigarette.

A father's heroism

None of the kibbutz’s protected spaces had bullet-proof doors. His own safe room wasn’t equipped with a lock. “I just had to hope and pray.”

Other mistakes included storing the kibbutz’s guns and ammo in a central location rather than having them safely distributed in locked gun cabinets in people’s homes. Half the members of Be’eri’s emergency response team were gunned down trying to reach the armory, he says matter of factly.

His first concern on October 7 was for Emily, who was sleeping over at a friend’s house 300 meters away. With bullets flying, there was no chance for him to run there to attempt to rescue her. He was in telephone contact with his neighbors, learning that some kibbutz members were trapped in their safe rooms, and some burned to death. He left his shelter at 10 a.m. Armed with his pistol, two magazine clips, and a bullet in the chamber, he positioned himself by his kitchen window, which offered a wide field of fire. He then removed the screen so as not to deflect his own shots. The Hand family house was relatively untouched, apart from shrapnel damage. “While I couldn’t protect my daughter, I was able to protect three houses,” he says.

He remained at his post until 11:30 p.m. when IDF soldiers arrived. “The amount of guilt that I felt at not going to save her [Emily] even at the risk of my own life... But I knew I would be dead, and she would be an orphan. It was a very big thing afterwards. At the time, I was just in survival mode,” he explains.

With self-deprecating humor, he remembers that he only had two cans of beer in the fridge that Saturday morning. It’s a mistake he has never repeated, he says, now always having a case of suds on hand.

Another cause of guilt for him is not being able to work. He had previously been employed at Be’eri’s print shop, and then as a painter at the kibbutz’s toy and furniture factory. While the workshop has reopened, he is unable to commute the 90 minutes there, since he must stay close to his daughter. “I have to keep her normalized,” he says.

“They’ve given me a lot of leeway,” he says of the kibbutz secretariat. In the meantime, he devotes a lot of time to hostage issues. Looking wistful, he concludes: “I will not feel safe going back to Be’eri with this government in power, and without Hamas being completely crushed.”