Dad waits to hug daughter he thought dead but was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists

A DAD told tonight of his relief as he was reunited with his nine-year-old daughter after she was released by Hamas after “a long and painful nightmare”.

Thomas Hand spoke ahead of the tearful reunion with Emily – who he once thought had been killed in the October 7 attack on Israel.

In a message, he said: “We have been waiting for far too long for this moment. Every day has been a long and painful living nightmare.…my Emily is coming home at last, broken but in one piece.”

The schoolgirl was snatched in her pyjamas on October 7 and turned nine in captivity.

Earlier Irishman Thomas told us of his nerve-shredding wait to hug Emily again and said he would tell her: “I love you, I love you, I love you.”

He said Emily would be greeted by her beloved dog and cuddly toys – and would enjoy “the best birthday party she never had”.

Thomas, 63, said he would give her a huge hug – although he was scared to squeeze her too tightly because he did not know if she had any injuries, like broken ribs.

“I have no idea what they’ve done to her since they grabbed my poor innocent little girl,” he said.

Thomas has been Irish-Israeli Emily’s sole parent after her mother died from cancer when she was two.

He was initially informed she was among 100 people killed in an attack on a kibbutz three miles from Gaza on October 7 while visiting a friend on a sleepover.

Thomas later learned she was alive and being held.

He said Emily’s dog Johnsie would be an important part of her recovery.

“I absolutely insisted that the dog must come with me and, to my surprise, the Israeli army has agreed,” he explained.

“They even agreed not to take her from the border in a helicopter to a safe place – because the dog might go a bit berserk in a helicopter and Emily needs that dog for her comfort.”

Johnsie, he explained, was two when a neighbour gave the dog to Emily as a present.

“The dog is so loving and so calm usually… he’s just the calming influence Emily will need for the next few weeks.

“Emily is so wonderfully sweet and innocent – and I hope and pray that this awful experience will not have taken that away from her.

“I expect she’ll be very angry with me to start with because you’ve been thinking, ‘Where is Daddy? Why has Daddy not come to save me?’

“But the great thing is she cannot blame the dog at all – and I’m absolutely sure the dog will get the cuddle first before me.

“She really is a special girl who loves everything in this world – even the big snails that crawl around our kibbutz. Emily used to put them on her arms and hands and stroke them gently. I’m sure we’ll be able eventually to cure all the physical problems that may be inflicted on her… but the things in the mind are gonna take much more time and effort.”

He added: “I’ve always stressed that the pain I’m going through is just one story out of hundreds. Because there are still over 200 innocent people, children and adults, being held in gruesome conditions by Hamas – who could’ve released them at any time but are using them as pawns and human shields.

“I feel so guilty that she was snatched because I let her go to a sleepover with one of her best friends – who’s also being released today. At first I was told that my daughter was dead. At least I was able to start mourning. Then I received what I considered at the time to be much worse news. Because they found no DNA and no blood, the Israelis believed she was kidnapped.

“I had these awful visions of what the Hamas terrorists could be doing to her and I thought that was even worse than just death. Now I will find out the truth. I expect it will take quite a time before she will unburden herself.”

Thomas, who lives on kibbutz Be’eri said he was going to give Emily the best birthday party. He said: “She turned nine on November 17, more than a month after she was taken from me.

“I am sure she had no idea it was her birthday – she would have lost track of time and dates there. I still have the party balloons – this one is floating in my hotel room, but it’s lost a lot of air, it’s going flat. We’ll get hundreds and hundreds now and make a great party.”

He added: “She’ll have the best Christmas and Hanukkah she’s ever had. I’m a lapsed Catholic and her mum and almost all her friends are Jewish, so we celebrate both.

“I may take her out of Israel altogether so she can recover in a country that’s fully at peace. Like England.”

Dubliner Thomas travelled to Israel three decades ago to volunteer on a kibbutz near the Gaza border, where he met a local woman named Narkis.

They married and had two children Aiden, 29, and Natali, 26, before they split. He then had third child Emily with another partner who died of cancer when she was two.