Hamas captivity survivor Emily Damari returns to spot of her abduction in Kfar Aza
Freed hostage posts ‘I’m back’ along with photo of herself sitting among ruins of apartment from where terrorists abducted her in October 2023; urges freeing all hostages
Hamas captivity survivor Emily Damari returned to her home in Kfar Aza for the first time on Sunday, visiting the ruins of her apartment from where Hamas terrorists abducted her in October 2023 and then held her in the Gaza Strip for 471 days.
Damari, who was released two weeks ago, made the trip with her family and fellow hostage Romi Gonen who was set free with her as part of an ongoing ceasefire deal between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas.
Damari, a British-Israeli national, posted about the visit to her Instagram account, along with a photo of herself sitting outside her destroyed home. Pinned on the wall above her, there remained a poster from the campaign to bring her back from captivity.
“I’m back,” she wrote in English along with a three-fingered emoji which has become a symbol of defiance after Damari returned from Gaza with two fingers missing from her left hand, the result of a gunshot wound she suffered during the Hamas assault on her home.
Continuing in Hebrew, she wrote, “Today I returned to my home, to my apartment, to the oxygen that I had and was nearly ended. I returned to the place where my whole nightmare began 485 days ago and I close just part of the circle that I waited so much to close.”
“But like me, there are another 79 hostages who need to close their circles and are waiting to complete what is missing.”
“We must not stop here. We must bring everyone, that means everyone, home,” she wrote stressing the word “everyone” both times.
Hostages who are still alive must be rehabilitated and those who aren’t need burial, she continued.
“The real victory I will only feel when they come back,” she concluded.
Damari’s brother Tom posted a photo of Emily sitting together with Romi Gonen during the visit to Kfar Aza on his Instagram. In the background could be seen a photo of Aviv Baram, a good friend of Emily’s who was killed on October 7.
Emily, 28, Romi, 24, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31 were all released on January 19. Gonen was abducted from the Supernova music festival, while Damari and Steinbrecher were taken from their homes in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023, during the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel when terrorists killed 1,200 people and abducted 251 to Gaza.
At least 62 people were massacred in Kfar Aza and 19 were taken as hostages.
Emily and Romi were held together during their captivity.
????????Emily and Romi at Kibbutz Kfar Aza Today next to the picture of the late Aviv Baram, who fell while defending the kibbutz.
Image rights: Emily Damari and Romi Gonen pic.twitter.com/l02jMs3P91— Iris (@streetwize) February 2, 2025
Tom wrote that Romi has “become an inseparable part of the family.”
Describing the scene where Romi and Emily sat together near the poster of Baram, he wrote it was “a moment that was perfect and on the other hand so lacking. That is exactly how the agreement to bring back the hostages feels. Great joy to see our hostages coming back and a punch in the soft underbelly to see the buses of vile murderers being set free.”
During the first stage of the three-phase ceasefire, Hamas is to return 33 hostages over a period of six weeks during which time Israel will release over 1,400 Palestinian security prisoners it has incarcerated, hundreds of whom were convicted of deadly terror attacks on Israelis.
The details of the second and third phases, during which more hostages are to be released and Israel is to withdraw from the Gaza Strip have yet to be negotiated. There are concerns by families of hostages that the fragile ceasefire could break down after the first stage, leaving their loved ones still in captivity.
Seventy-six of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas on October 7 remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas has so far released 18 hostages — civilians, soldiers, and Thai nationals — during a ceasefire that began in January. The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that.
Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
