Nearly two months after
being ripped from their homes and torn apart from their families,
freed hostages are returning to completely different lives in Israel.
Some of them are waiting for other family members to be released.
Others are just learning for the first time
that their loved ones were killed by Hamas.
Clarissa Ward spoke with one father, Thomas hand.
You might remember him.
He initially thought that his daughter had been killed.
He was actually grateful for it because of what he imagined Hamas might do to her.
Then he found out that she was alive.
And now nine year old Emily is home safe and she is slowly sharing the details
of what happened to her after she was kidnaped by Hamas on October 7th.
So the jets should be here in a couple of minutes like, oh,
family and
all of a sudden the door opened up
and just ran.
It was beautiful.
Just like in
just like I had imagined it,
you know, running together.
I squeezed the probably squeezed too hard.
It was a moment Thomas had thought would never come.
Told his nine year old daughter Emily had been killed in the October
7th attacks, then that she was believed to be held hostage in Gaza,
finally reunited with her family
after 50 days in captivity free,
but visibly haunted by her ordeal.
The most
shocking, disturbing part of the meeting was
she was trying to bring
I had to put my ear on her lips like this, closed
and say, what did you say?
I thought you said I thought you were kidnaped.
She thought I was in
captivity.
And what has she told you?
About what she's gone through?
I thought she was in the tunnels, but she wasn't in the tunnels.
They were actually
fleeing from house to house.
She didn't like it.
People prefer referred to as Gaza.
She says the cuffs, that the box.
So you have to say, like, how long were you in the box?
The coop?
She said, a year.
And apart from the whispering, that was like
a punch in the gut.
There's that one photograph
right after your reunion
and you're holding her. And
there is this sort of seriousness
to her facial expression.
Yeah, she's.
She's almost staring, isn't she?
She a disconnect with everything going on around her.
Has she cried? I
said last night
she cried
until her face was red and blotchy.
She couldn't stop. She.
She didn't want any comfort.
I think.
I guess she's forgotten how to be comforted.
I just had to wait until she came out of it by herself.
And she knows how to do that.
She's a very determined little girl, very strong.
I knew that her spirit would get her through it.
There have been glimpses of the old Emily
happily walking the family dog, Jauncey,
but many moments of pain, like when Thomas was forced to break
the news to her that his ex-wife Naki, had been killed.
Does Emily understand what happened on October 7th?
Yeah.
Yeah, unfortunately she does.
And how do you tell her?
You know, your second numbers dead, killed, shot.
When we got back to the hospital after psychiatrist.
You know what? Weather. What should I do? What should I do?
She said you've just got to tell her straight.
The best way.
Okay?
Yeah, that was.
That was very hard, because we told her and,
you know, her little eyes closed up and she just went
to the shop shopping and take a breath.
Terrible thing to tell, child.
And as they recommend that, you have to close the book.
It sounds cruel, but you have to stop that hope.
So you you you've got to stop that.
It has to be. I know.
Oh, kisses.
That.
And so.
What is the next step now?
How long do you stay here?
How do you start a new life?
The future is obviously
to get Emily back to health.
And we will do that along the way.
But the next thing is, along the way is that we have to get all the children.
Obviously,
all the women, all the men, all the hostages have to come back.
They have to be brought back.
Now, Jake, you heard Thomas talking about getting Emily back to health.
Now, she is in good physical condition.
There's no indication that she was physically abused in any way.
She lost a lot of weight.
She was very, very pale.
She said that they didn't have enough to eat.
But obviously there is the psychological component here.
The very fact that she was only able to whisper because
she's so frightened of raising her voice, he said that the only word
she appeared to learn in Arabic was the word for be Quiet,
which gives you an indication of the fear that she was living through.
He also talked about how she has very bad head lice,
but all things considered, she is in reasonably good health physically.
And one other important thing, when he talks
about bringing the hostages back, he's very focused at the moment
on the mother of Emily's very good friend, Kayla.
This is the girl he had gone to the play date with.
She had gone to the playdate was spend
the night with was kidnaped with, was held with along with Heller's
mother, Reya Rotem, who acted like a second mother to her
and then inexplicably at the last minute, two days before they were
due to be released, Raya was separated from Emily and Kayla.
You can imagine Kayla was released with Emily
and the anguish that she is going through now, being separated from her mother.
And and this is a very important point for Tom.
As he says,
going forward, we need to keep fighting for all the hostages, but particularly
for Ryan, and try to get to the bottom of why it was
that she was separated from her daughter just ahead of their release.