‘I’m alive again, my beloveds’: Ex-hostages send first messages after Gaza captivity
Less than 24 hours after being released by Hamas in first stage of nascent truce, Emily Damari signs social media post with ‘rock on’ emoji to represent two fingers lost on Oct. 7

While the nation attempted to contain its curiosity and give the three hostages freed from Hamas captivity in Gaza on Sunday their privacy, messages shared by the women and their families sparked hope and joy in Israel after over 15 months of war.
“Love, love, love,” Emily Damari wrote in an Instagram story shared online Monday morning, thanking her family and friends for their support. “I’m alive again, my beloveds.”
The Sheba Medical Center said on Sunday night that Damari, 28, Romi Gonen, 24, and Doron Steinbrecher, 31, were in stable condition after they were transferred by helicopter from the Gaza border to the Tel Aviv-area hospital and reunited with their families.
The women were the first of 33 hostages set to be released over the next several weeks, as part of the first stage of a deal meant to result in the release of the 94 hostages still held in Gaza and end the fighting in the Palestinian enclave.
The three women were released in a chaotic scene in Gaza City on Sunday evening, with masked Hamas gunmen handing them to the Red Cross amid a large rowdy crowd of mainly young men.
Damari’s mother Mandy said her daughter was “in much better health than we expected,” in a statement released via the Hostages and Missing Families Forum Monday morning.

“Yesterday, I finally got to hug Emily, just as I had dreamed of doing for a long time,” she said, thanking the public for its unwavering support over the past 15 months for the dual Israeli-UK citizen.
“It was a great joy to catch a glimpse — along with the rest of the world — of Emily’s strength, determination and charisma when she was released,” she added.
However, she noted that her daughter faces a long road to recovery, after having 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.
On Instagram, the former hostage wrote that the outpouring of love and support had made her “heart burst with excitement.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” she wrote. “I’m the happiest in the world just to be.”
Damari’s post was signed with the “rock on” emoji, in a nod to the gesture her hand now permanently makes.

In highly emotional pictures and videos of the release Sunday, Damari, Gonen and Steinbrecher could be seen smiling excitedly as they were enveloped by family members. Outside, friends and supporters celebrated, dancing with Israeli flags.
Friends of Damari told Channel 12 that she had leaned through the window of a vehicle to greet them as she passed by after arriving at the Ramat Gan hospital.
“She’s happy and she’s as healthy as she can be… she’s a fighter, she’s strong,” one of her friends said.

In a WhatsApp voice message shared with Hebrew media, Gonen told her friends, “This is Romi, who returned from captivity. Thank you all, I have no idea what you did, I’ve only seen a tiny drop, but you’re the best, I appreciate it so much. Sending you all hugs and kisses, and God willing we’ll meet again soon.”
Before Sunday, Gonen was last heard from at 10:58 a.m. October 7, 2023, as she and her friends tried to escape the Hamas assault on the Nova music rave near Kibbutz Re’im.
Gonen had been on the phone with her mother, Meirav Leshem Gonen, since the terrorists attacked the outdoor event at 6:30 a.m., telling her shortly before she was kidnapped that she had been shot and was bleeding.
Leshem Gonen wrote on Facebook on Monday that the family was walling itself off from the commotion surrounding the release, which captivated Israeli society and drew massive international attention.
“These hours we are in an alternate reality, disconnected from the outside world, in which nothing exists but family,” Leshem Gonen wrote on Facebook. “In a sec we’ll reset and be back,” she added with a smiley face emoji.

Overnight, Leshem Gonen posted, “It will take me, us, a moment to breathe her in and believe in this new reality.”
There was no comment from the Steinbrecher family, but a friend told the Ynet news site that she appeared to be doing well.
“We saw Doron standing and smiling,” Ofer Oved told the outlet. “We all understand that it will take them time, but alongside the medical checks they look good and we’re hoping that soon they’ll come back to us, to our Kfar Aza community that moved to Ruhama.”
Like Damari, Steinbrecher was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. The government has constructed temporary prefabricated houses for residents in another kibbutz, Ruhama, about 15 kilometers (10 miles) away.

Ynet reported that all three women were slated to undergo intensive medical exams throughout the day on Monday. Some of the tests had been set to begin on Sunday evening, according to hospital staff, but they were delayed to give the former hostages more time to be with loved ones.
Sheba was expected to update the public on their conditions following the exams, the report added. The delay also pushed a security debriefing scheduled for Monday to Tuesday instead, according to the outlet.
“It will take a few more days to complete all the needed examinations,” Health Ministry deputy director Dr. Sefi Mendelovich said Sunday.
The hostage-ceasefire deal 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 attack and free the rest of the hostages. The first phase of the three-phase accord 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.
Emanuel Fabian contributed to this report.