‘I came back alive!’: Videos show freed hostages reuniting with their mothers
Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, Doron Steinbrecher, tearful and smiling, seen embracing their moms shortly after crossing into Israeli territory for the first time in 471 days
The military on Monday released tear-jerking videos of the moments three Israeli hostages released from Hamas captivity after 471 days were reunited with their mothers, at an Israel Defense Forces facility near the Gaza border.
In the short clips, the women can be seen being led by Israel Defense Forces troops — mostly female — to meet their mothers, who were waiting for their daughters at the special military facility that was set up ahead of the release on Sunday.
Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher were the first hostages to be released in a ceasefire deal with the Palestinian terror group that came into effect on Sunday.
The agreement caps a protracted international effort to get both Hamas and Israel to agree to a deal to halt the war sparked by the terror group’s October 7, 2023, massacre and to free the rest of the hostages.
In the video, Gonen, clearly moved and excited, can be seen being led by an IDF soldier to a room where her mother, Merav Leshem Gonen, was waiting for her.
They ran into each other’s arms in a tearful embrace.
A shot a few moments later showed Gonen — now changed out of the black hoodie she was wearing when she and the other two women were handed over to the Red Cross by masked Hamas gunmen in Gaza City some two hours earlier — speaking to her father on a video call.
“Dad, I came back alive! I came back alive,” she told him through happy tears.
Gonen, now 24, was shot and kidnapped from the Nova music festival near Kibbutz Re’im on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists burst across the border into Israel by land, air, and sea, killing some 1,200 people and seizing 251 hostages, mostly civilians, amid many acts of brutality and sexual assault.
Next in the video, Damari can be seen walking through a tent wearing a bright green sweatsuit, surrounded by IDF officers, chatting, smiling, and shaking hands as she was guided through the facility to meet her mother, Mandy Damari.
The camera angle caught mother and daughter as they rounded the corner and walked into a tight embrace.
The next shot showed the freshly released hostage on a video call with her brothers.
“I survived!” she shouted happily, waving her bandaged hand in a defiant fist.
Damari, now 28, lost two fingers when she was shot by Hamas terrorists during the onslaught at Kibbutz Kfar Aza. The gunmen who burst into her home shot her dog, she reportedly told her family and friends in her first conversations with them on Sunday evening, and she was hit, too, as she tried to comfort her dying pet.
A screenshot of the video call that Mandy posted on social media minutes later quickly went viral, and the released hostage herself used the “rock on” emoji in her own post on Monday, in a nod to her mutilated hand.
Emily is home ♥️ pic.twitter.com/JCMmKEAhKr
— Mandy Damari ???? (@DamariMandy) January 19, 2025
The footage also showed Doron Steinbrecher’s mother Simona walking excitedly down a corridor in the facility to the room where her daughter was waiting for her, still dressed in the bright pink outfit from her Hamas captors.
They hugged and cried as Simona could be heard saying, “My beautiful girl, you’re with me, I’ll keep you safe.”
Steinbrecher, now 31, was also kidnapped from her home in Kfar Aza on October 7, 2023, when terrorists infiltrated from nearby Gaza.
The IDF also released footage of the women in the helicopter on the way to Sheba Medical Center near Tel Aviv, where they were taken after reuniting with their mothers and undergoing preliminary medical checks and screening.
“The nightmare is over!” Damari wrote on a whiteboard during the helicopter ride.
The video also showed Israeli Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar alongside the three hostages. Bar had flown the chopper from an airbase to the facility near the border ahead of the hostages’ release.
The former hostages are expected to stay at Sheba Medical Center for the next few days, as they begin their recovery.
Footage released by the military on January 20, 2025, shows Romi Gonen, Emily Damari, and Doron Steinbrecher in a helicopter on the way to Sheba Medical Center, shortly after they were released from Hamas captivity in Gaza on January 19, 2025. (IDF)
The first phase of the three-phase deal with Hamas provides for a total of 33 captives to be released from Gaza over 42 days in exchange for over 1,904 Palestinian prisoners and detainees, including several serving multiple life sentences for deadly terror attacks and murders.
The next releases under the deal are scheduled for Saturday, when four more women hostages are to be freed. All hostages to be freed in the first phase of the deal are so-called humanitarian cases — women, children, men over 50, and ill or injured men. Most but not all of the 33 are believed to be alive.
Of the 251 hostages abducted by Hamas during the October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in southern Israel, 91 are now believed to remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 34 confirmed dead by the IDF.
Hamas released 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November, 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 recently recovered from Gaza in a clandestine Israeli military operation.
