Ex-Hamas Hostage Emily Damari Describes 471 Days of Captivity in Gaza

Former Hamas Hostage Emily Damari Shares Harrowing 471-Day Captivity Experience

Standing before a packed audience at Temple Emanu-El in New York City, Emily Damari received a standing ovation before she even began to speak. The 28-year-old survivor, recently freed after spending 471 days as a Hamas hostage, addressed the crowd alongside actress and activist Noa Tishbi, recounting her ordeal since the October 7 attack.

“It was a very important opportunity for me to share my story and the experience I had gone through as a hostage of Hamas in Gaza for 471 days,” Damari told Fox News Digital.

Her account of captivity revealed both horror and remarkable resilience. On October 7, Hamas terrorists stormed her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, breaking into her safe room. “They were inside the safe room and shot my hand. The first thing that they did, they shot my hand,” she recounted. Moments later, they killed her dog. “They’re just looking at her… and immediately they shot her in the head.”

As terrorists dragged her toward Gaza, Damari begged them to kill her instead. “I understand he’s not going to take me to a hospital in Ashkelon or Tel Aviv… so I’m like, no, no. Please shoot me. I don’t want to be a hostage.” Instead, she was forced across the border into Gaza.

Throughout her 15-month captivity, Damari was moved between more than 30 different locations – apartments, schools, tunnels, garages, and even a tire storage room. She endured days without showers, minimal water, and cramped, filthy spaces, sometimes “without any toilet.”

One of her most disturbing revelations concerned Gaza’s Shifa Hospital, which she said was far from the civilian medical facility it’s often portrayed as in international media. “That hospital… you always see on Al Jazeera, saying there’s a civilian hospital and everything. So just so you know… it’s not a civilian hospital,” she stated.

“Shifa Hospital is where I was treated by ‘Dr. Hamas’ — that is how the doctor introduced himself to me — and where I saw many terrorists, dead bodies, hostages and weapons,” Damari explained. “Imagine going to your local hospital and seeing armed terrorists and dead bodies.”

The most searing memory for Damari came when she was taken underground into a small cage where she encountered other kidnapped girls. “The first thing you see is a 9-year-old girl… without her parents,” she said. “It was one of the most painful things that I saw in captivity.”

As a woman in captivity, Damari lived with constant fear. “You go to sleep every night… with that fear, that they are going to rape you,” she said. Being a gay woman, she had to hide her identity to stay alive.

Despite her circumstances, Damari maintained her defiance. When Hamas repeatedly called her a “prisoner,” she pushed back, asking why she didn’t receive basic rights prisoners should have: “Why do I not get three meals a day? Why don’t I get to speak with my mother? Why don’t I ever get to see the sun?”

During captivity, Hamas guards routinely played Al Jazeera broadcasts on battery-powered televisions. Damari was stunned to see American campus protests supporting Hamas. “I couldn’t believe watching the protests in the USA, especially at Columbia University,” she said. “Students protesting and people demonstrating for something they knew nothing about.”

She was particularly struck by LGBTQ activists participating in these demonstrations. “I even commented to my captor that if those Queers for Palestine protesters ever got into Gaza, they would never come out,” she recalled. “The terrorist captor who was holding me just smirked and agreed.”

Throughout her ordeal, Damari found hope in the weekly demonstrations held in Israel. “We waited every week for that Shabbat… it was one of the biggest lights for us,” she said. “We watched the protest, and we knew they didn’t forget about us… they did whatever they could for us to be released.”

One of her greatest anxieties during captivity was not knowing whether her family had survived the massacre in Kfar Aza. Terrorists had reached “very close” to her mother’s house and her brother’s home. She finally saw a sign her mother was alive when guards briefly switched on a TV showing someone holding her poster in the Knesset. But she only learned her brother had survived after crossing back into Israel.

Even after her release, Damari couldn’t fully embrace her freedom knowing her best friends from Kfar Aza, Gali and Ziv Berman, remained in Gaza. Their eventual release on October 13, in a deal brokered by the Trump administration, marked the moment Damari “truly felt free.”

“I didn’t feel comfortable seeing the sunset. I didn’t enjoy anything… while they were still there,” she explained. “Now I’m feeling amazing. That was the real happiness that I was searching for.”

Looking toward the future, Damari believes there’s purpose in her survival. “I think there’s a reason that God chose me to have this horrible experience… I have the opportunity to speak with the world… and to share my story,” she said, revealing she has begun writing a book.

She concluded with a plea not to forget the four hostages still held in Gaza, one of whom is reportedly expected to be returned soon. “Everyone should have their dignified burial,” she said.