‘It is breaking my heart a little more, day by day,’ says Mandy Damari, whose 28-year-old daughter, Emily, is the only British hostage who remains in Gaza. ‘Soon there will be nothing left of my heart – or Emily.’
Despite a year spent travelling around the world to lobby for her release in the capitals of power, her kind, loving daughter is not free.
Alongside 100 other captives, the Tottenham Hotspur fan is still being held under the watch of Hamas terrorists, and every second Mrs Damari, 63, fears the very worst for her child.
Now the nursery school teacher has lost all patience. This week she travelled to Downing Street and handed Sir Keir Starmer a heartfelt note to her daughter.
The Surrey-born mother instructed the PM to get the message to Emily by any means possible – and asked the British government to do far more to bring her home.
Pictured, British hostage Emily Damari who still remains in Gaza after the October 7 Hamas terror attack
Mrs Damari, Emily’s mother, was born in Surrey and grew up in Beckenham before visiting Israel in her 20s
Mandy Damari is pictured holding a poster of her daughter Emily. She is calling for the return of her daughter
This week the nursery school teacher travelled to Downing Street and handed Sir Keir Starmer a heartfelt note to her daughter
On Monday it will be a year since the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the October 7 attacks in which 1,200 were slain in cold blood by Hamas terrorists.
But many of the British public do not even know that a UK citizen remains in captivity.
For that reason, Mrs 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 on her agonising fight as she implores the PM ‘to use every ounce of his influence’ to bring Emily home.
‘Diplomatic pressure, negotiations, humanitarian efforts — whatever it takes,’ she says. ‘We cannot 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 of Kibbutz Kfar Aza near the Gaza border, where she was born and raised.
Her beloved golden cockapoo, Choocha, was shot dead in her arms, while the attack left her with a gunshot wound to the hand.
Mrs Damari says she has been left ‘a desperate, panicked, and disillusioned parent, who is terrified for the life of my child’
Mrs Damari has asked that every time Sir Keir Starmer’s government mentions the hostages they must mention Emily (pictured)
On Monday it will be a year since the biggest slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, the October 7 attacks in which 1,200 were slain in cold blood by Hamas terrorists. Pictured: A man walks past a giant billboard featuring portraits of Israeli hostages held in Gaza since the October 7 attack
She was kidnapped alongside twin brothers Ziv and Gali Berman, 27, and remains somewhere in the Gaza Strip, deep underground in a tunnel.
Mrs Damari writes that she hopes her note will reaches her daughter as she is freed alive, but if it finds her in Gaza ‘know that we all love you and miss you and are sick with worry about what is happening to you every day’.
It goes on: ‘We are praying and meeting whoever we can to get you back home.
‘Please keep strong, keep praying and just be your beautiful self that I love to the moon and back.
‘You will come home – and I promise that I’ll never complain again about your perfume sticking to me when you’re home.’
She signs it off with love from mum ‘who is always right’ – a reference to a loving tattoo with those words which Emily has above her left elbow.
Mrs Damari was born in Surrey and grew up in Beckenham before visiting Israel in her 20s. Here she met Emily’s father volunteering, fell in love and never left.
She remained in Kfar Aza, where she raised Emily, but visits the UK regularly 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 who he met when attending the festival before the deadly October 7 attack by Hamas, at the site of the Nova festival in Reim, southern Israel
Just months before the terror attack, Emily travelled to White Hart Lane to watch her beloved Tottenham Hotspurs play.
New pictures released to the Mail show her enjoying a spring day in Hyde Park and attending an Ed Sheeran gig in London the previous year.
But the Adele fan’s mother feels she has been let down by the British government and the international community.
She said following a previous visit to see Sir Keir last month, where she urged him to use ‘his power and his position to secure the hostages release’, the following morning she ‘suddenly got so angry’.
‘Why do I have to ask all these heads of governments to do things to get Emily out,’ she wrote.
‘They are supposed to be intelligent people who take care of their citizens’ wellbeing – they go to the best universities, have degrees, even Master’s degrees – aren’t the answers obvious to them?’
She cannot stop thinking of the six hostages executed by Hamas on September 1 – not least Eden Yerushalmi, a female captive just four years younger than Emily.
‘[She] weighed just 32 kilos when they found her – the weight of a child,’ Mrs Damari writes. ‘Their spines were bent from the impossibility of standing up in those narrow tunnels.’
They were each found ‘starved and shot to death’ having ‘endured unimaginable suffering’. ‘Their bodies tell the stories of their torment and pain,’ she writes.
Mrs Damari says she has been left ‘a desperate, panicked, and disillusioned parent, who is terrified for the life of my child.’
‘Time has run out,’ she writes.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
