It’s a year since Hamas took away my beautiful girl… my heart is breaking a little more every day, says mother of the only British hostage still in Gaza as she pens moving letter that she hopes will reach her alive
“It breaks my heart a little more every day,” said Mandy Damari, whose 28-year-old daughter, Emily, is the only British hostage left in Gaza. “Soon there will be nothing left of my heart – and of Emily.”
Despite spending a year traveling the world to lobby for her release in the capitals of power, her kind, loving daughter is not free.
Along with a hundred other prisoners, the Tottenham Hotspur fan is still held under the watch of Hamas terrorists, and every second Ms Damari, 63, fears the worst for her child.
Now the kindergarten teacher has lost all her patience. This week she traveled to Downing Street and presented Sir Keir Starmer with a heartfelt note to her daughter.
The Surrey-born mother told the Prime Minister to get the message across to Emily in any way she could – and asked the British government to do much more to bring her home.
Pictured is British hostage Emily Damari still in Gaza after the October 7 Hamas terror attack
Ms Damari was born in Surrey and grew up in Beckenham before visiting Israel in her twenties
Mandy Damari is pictured holding a poster of her daughter Emily. She calls for her daughter’s return
This week the nursery teacher traveled to Downing Street and presented Sir Keir Starmer with a heartfelt note to her daughter
Monday marks the one-year anniversary of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust: the October 7 attacks, in which 1,200 Jews were killed in cold blood by Hamas terrorists.
But many British citizens are not even aware that a British citizen remains in captivity.
For that reason, Ms Damari has asked that every time Sir Keir Starmer’s government mentions the hostages, they must mention Emily.
And now, as she steps up her campaign for her beloved daughter with a speech in Hyde Park tomorrow, the tortured mother has published the note in The Daily Mail.
She has also shared a moving personal statement about her painful battle, as she begs the Prime Minister to ‘use every ounce of his influence’ to bring Emily home.
“Diplomatic pressure, negotiations, humanitarian efforts – whatever it takes,” she says. ‘We can’t let another day pass. We cannot afford to lose any more lives to this nightmare. We don’t need tea and sympathy, we need actions, not words.’
On October 7 last year, Emily was taken from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, near the Gaza border, where she was born and raised.
Her beloved golden cockapoo, Choocha, was shot dead in her arms, with the attack leaving her with a gunshot wound to the hand.
Ms Damari says she is ‘a desperate, panicked and disillusioned parent, terrified for my child’s life’
Ms Damari has asked that every time Sir Keir Starmer’s government mentions the hostages they must mention Emily (pictured)
Monday marks the one-year anniversary of the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust: the October 7 attacks, in which 1,200 Jews were killed in cold blood by Hamas terrorists. Pictured: A man walks past a giant billboard with portraits of Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the October 7 attack
She was kidnapped along with twin brothers Ziv and Gali Berman, 27, and lives somewhere in the Gaza Strip, deep underground in a tunnel.
Ms. Damari writes that she hopes her note will reach her daughter if she is released alive, but if it finds her in Gaza “please know that we all love and miss you and are sick of worrying about what happens to you every day.” happens’.
It continues: ‘We are praying and meeting with whoever we can to get you home.
“Please stay strong, keep praying and just be your beautiful self that I love to the moon and back.
“You’re coming home – and I promise I’ll never complain about your perfume sticking to me when you’re home again.”
She signs it off with love from mom “who is always right” – a reference to a loving tattoo of the words Emily has above her left elbow.
Ms Damari was born in Surrey and grew up in Beckenham before visiting Israel in her twenties. This is where she met Emily’s volunteer father, fell in love and never left.
She remained in Kfar Aza, where she raised Emily, but regularly visits Britain every year.
The Tottenham Hotspur fan is still being held under the watch of Hamas terrorists
Shye Klein, 27, a photographer and Nova Festival survivor, looks at a portrait of Dor Avitan whom he met while attending the festival before the deadly Hamas attack on October 7, at the Nova Festival site in Reim , southern Israel
Just months before the terror attack, Emily traveled to White Hart Lane to watch her beloved Tottenham Hotspurs play.
New photos released in the Mail show her enjoying a spring day in Hyde Park and attending an Ed Sheeran gig in London last year.
But the Adele fan’s mother feels let down by the British government and the international community.
She said that after an earlier visit to Sir Keir last month, where she urged him to “use his power and his position to secure the release of the hostages”, she “suddenly became so angry” the next morning.
“Why do I have to ask all these government leaders to do things to get Emily out,” she wrote.
“They are supposed to be intelligent people who care about the well-being of their citizens – they go to the best universities, have degrees, even master’s degrees – aren’t the answers obvious to them?”
She continues to think of the six hostages Hamas executed on September 1 – not least Eden Yerushalmi, a female prisoner just four years younger than Emily.
‘[She] weighed just 32 kilos when they found her – the weight of a child,” Ms Damari wrote. “Their spines were bent by the inability to stand up in those narrow tunnels.”
They were all found ‘starved and shot dead’ after having ‘endured unimaginable suffering’. “Their bodies tell the stories of their torment and pain,” she writes.
Ms Damari says she is “a desperate, panicked and disillusioned parent, terrified for my child’s life.”
“Time is up,” she writes.