“It’s breaking my heart a little more, day by day,” says Mandy Damari, whose 28-year-old daughter, Emily, is the only British hostage remaining in Gaza. “Soon there will be nothing left of my heart…or Emily.”
Despite spending a year traveling the world to press for her release in the capitals of power, her kind and loving daughter is not free.
The Tottenham Hotspur fan is still held with 100 other prisoners under the watch of Hamas terrorists, and every second Mrs Damari, 63, fears the worst for her son.
Now the kindergarten teacher has lost patience. This week he traveled to Downing Street and presented Sir Keir Starmer with an emotional note for his daughter.
The Surrey-born mother ordered the Prime Minister to get the message to Emily by any means possible and called on the British government to do much more to bring her home.
Pictured is British hostage Emily Damari still in Gaza after the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7.
Mrs Damari, Emily’s mother, was born in Surrey and grew up in Beckenham before visiting Israel when she was 20.
Mandy Damari is pictured holding a poster of her daughter Emily. He asks for his daughter’s return
This week the nursery teacher traveled to Downing Street and gave Sir Keir Starmer a heartfelt note for his daughter
Monday will mark one year since the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the October 7 attacks in which 1,200 people were murdered in cold blood by Hamas terrorists.
But much of the British public does not even know that a UK citizen remains in captivity.
For this reason, Mrs Damari has asked that every time Sir Keir Starmer’s government mentions the hostages it mentions 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 agonizing fight as she implores the Prime Minister to “use every ounce of his influence” to bring Emily home.
“Diplomatic pressure, negotiations, humanitarian efforts… whatever it takes,” he says. ‘We can’t let another day pass. We cannot afford to lose any more lives to this nightmare. We don’t need tea or 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, while the attack left her with a gunshot wound to her hand.
Mrs Damari says she has been left as “a desperate, terrified and disillusioned mother, who is terrified for her son’s life”.
Mrs Damari has asked that every time Sir Keir Starmer’s government mentions the hostages it mentions Emily (pictured).
Monday will mark one year since the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, the October 7 attacks in which 1,200 people were murdered in cold blood by Hamas terrorists. Pictured: A man walks past a giant poster 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 remains somewhere in the Gaza Strip, deep in a tunnel.
Mrs. Damari writes that she hopes her note reaches her daughter when she is released alive, but if she finds her in Gaza “please know that we all love you and miss you and are sick with worry about what happens to you every day.”
He continues: ‘We are praying and meeting with whoever we can for you to return home.
‘Please stay strong, keep praying and be the beautiful person I love to the moon and back.
“You’ll come home and I promise I’ll never complain about your perfume sticking to me when you’re home again.”
She signs it with Mom’s love “who is always right,” a reference to a loving tattoo of those words that Emily has above her left elbow.
Mrs Damari was born in Surrey and grew up in Beckenham before visiting Israel when she was 20. Here she met Emily’s father who was working as a volunteer, fell in love and never left.
He remained in Kfar Aza, where he raised Emily, but visits the UK regularly every year.
Tottenham Hotspur fan still detained under the surveillance 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, south of Israel.
Just a few months before the terrorist attack, Emily traveled to White Hart Lane to watch her beloved Tottenham Hotspurs play.
New pictures published in the Mail show her enjoying a spring day in Hyde Park and attending an Ed Sheeran concert in London the previous year.
But the mother of the Adele fan feels she has been let down by the British government and the international community.
He said that after an earlier visit to Sir Keir last month, where he urged him to use “his power and position to secure the release of the hostages”, he “suddenly became very angry” the following morning.
“Why do I have to ask all these heads of government to do things to get Emily out?” he 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 can’t stop thinking about the six hostages executed by Hamas on September 1, among them Eden Yerushalmi, a captive just four years younger than Emily.
“(She) weighed only 32 kilos when they found her, the weight of a child,” writes Mrs. Damari. “Their spines were bent because they couldn’t stand up in those narrow tunnels.”
Each of them was found “starved and shot to death” after having “endured unimaginable suffering.” “Their bodies tell the stories of their torment and pain,” he writes.
Mrs. Damari says she has been left “a desperate, terrified and disillusioned mother, who is terrified for my son’s life.”
“Time is up,” he writes.
