As she stood before a captivated audience at Temple Emanu-El in New York City, Emily Damari was met with a rousing standing ovation before she even uttered a word. The 28-year-old, who was a hostage of Hamas for 471 harrowing days, shared her compelling story alongside actress and activist Noa Tishbi. This experience, which has profoundly impacted every aspect of her life since October 7, was recounted in the packed synagogue.
Reflecting on her appearance, Damari expressed to Fox News Digital, “It was an incredibly important opportunity for me to share my story and the ordeal I endured as a hostage of Hamas in Gaza for 471 days.”
“They shot my hand. They shot my dog,” she recounted, providing a glimpse into the unimaginable horrors she faced.
In a moment that garnered widespread attention, Damari’s release was marked by her defiant push against the terrorist who was transferring her to the Red Cross. She vividly recalled the terrifying moment when Hamas militants invaded her safe room on that fateful October day. Despite the gravity of her testimony, she maintained a smile, a testament to her unwavering resilience. This refusal to be broken, she noted, was intentional.
“Even in the toughest moments, I refused to look down. I always looked up. I wouldn’t give the terrorists the satisfaction of seeing me break. They have not broken me,” Damari declared, her strength and determination evident to all in attendance.
“Even at the hardest moment I didn’t look down. I always looked up. I didn’t let the terrorists have the satisfaction of seeing me break. They have not broken me.”
On Oct. 7, Hamas terrorists stormed into her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. “They were inside the safe room and shot my hand. The first thing that they did, they shot my hand.” Moments later, they killed her dog. “They’re just looking at her… and immediately they shot her in the head.”
Dragged toward Gaza, she begged them to end her life on the spot. “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 taken across the border.
Emily Damari, right, and her mother Mandy are seen near kibbutz Reim, southern Israel after Emily was released from captivity by Hamas terrorists in Gaza, on Sunday, Jan. 19, 2025. (AP/Israeli Army)
She said at Shifa Hospital in Gaza that she “saw many terrorists, dead bodies, hostages and weapons.”
One of the most important messages she wants Americans to understand, she said, is what she witnessed inside Shifa Hospital, widely described abroad as a civilian medical facility is false.
“That hospital… you always see on Al Jazeera, saying there’s a civilian hospital and everything,” she added. “So just so you know… it’s not a civilian hospital.”
“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. Imagine going to your local hospital and seeing armed terrorists and dead bodies.”
Former Hamas hostage Emily Damari speaks with Noa Tishbi about her life as a Hamas hostage. (Fox News)
For over 15 months, she was held in more than 30 different locations — apartments, schools, tunnels, garages and even a tire storage room — often with days between showers and barely any water. She slept in cramped, filthy spaces, sometimes “without any toilet.”
The most searing memory, she said, came when she was taken deep underground. She was led into a small cage and saw a group of 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.”
“You go to sleep every night … with that fear, that they are going to rape you,” she said. “There is a thing about being a woman in captivity.”
Another moment she shared captured her strong personality. Emily said Hamas repeatedly referred to her as a “prisoner,” and she refused to accept it. “I said, okay, if you call me a prisoner, 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?” She told them openly that if she was truly a prisoner, she deserved basic rights. But the terrorists dismissed her.
People walk towards Israeli military helicopters as Romi Gonen, Doron Steinbrecher and Emily Damari, three female hostages who have been held in Gaza since the deadly Oct. 7 2023 attack, return to Israel as part of a ceasefire deal in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, by Israel’s border with Gaza in southern Israel, Jan. 19, 2025. (REUTERS/Amir Cohen)
Damari said Hamas guards routinely played Al Jazeera broadcasts using battery-powered televisions. What she saw stunned her, especially American campus protests.
“I couldn’t believe watching the protests in the USA, especially at Columbia University,” she told Fox News Digital. “Students protesting and people demonstrating for something they knew nothing about.”
As a gay woman who had to hide her identity to stay alive, she immediately noticed LGBTQ activists in the footage. She said she confronted her captors directly.
“I even commented to my captor that if those Queers for Palestine protesters ever got into Gaza, they would never come out,” she told Fox News Digital. “The terrorist captor who was holding me just smirked and agreed.”
Extremists protest against Israel at Columbia University in New York City.
“I feel sorry for all those people for being so poorly informed and not taking the time to understand the truth,” she said.
Damari said she and other hostages survived emotionally by clinging to any sign the world was fighting for them. Weekly demonstrations in Israel were everything.
“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.”
Freed hostage Emily Damari spoke at Temple Emanu-El in New York, November 5. During her captivity, she didn’t know whether her mother Mandy and brothers Tom and Ben had survived the Hamas attack. (Fox News)
In New York, accompanied by her mother, Mandy, and her brothers, Tom and Ben, she described the agony of not knowing whether her family had survived the massacre in Kfar Aza. Terrorists had reached “very close to my mother’s house” and her brother’s home.
She begged God for a sign her mother was alive. It came only when guards briefly switched on a small TV. “The first thing we saw was someone showing my poster in the Knesset … and I’m like, oh my God, it’s my mom. My mom is alive.”
But she still didn’t know about her brother. She learned the truth only after she crossed back into Israel. “They took me to the IDF, and they said, all your family is fine … my brother is fine,” she recalled in tears. “That was the moment I finally allowed myself to breathe.”
Freedom brought its own weight. Her best friends from Kfar Aza, Gali and Ziv Berman, remained in Gaza until the final hostage deal, brokered by the Trump administration. Emily said their release on Oct. 13 was the moment she truly felt free.
“I didn’t feel comfortable seeing the sunset. I didn’t enjoy anything… while they were still there.”
“Now I’m feeling amazing,” she said. “That was the real happiness that I was searching for.”
Asked what comes next, she did not hesitate to say.
Hamas hostage posters of Gali and Ziv Berman, close friends of Emily Damari who were finally released from captivity last month. “I didn’t feel comfortable to see the sunset. I didn’t enjoy anything… while they were still there,” Damari said. (The Hostages and Missing Families Forum)
“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, sharing that she has started writing a book. “Everyone should know everything about what we’ve been through.”
She ended with a plea not to forget the four hostages still held in Gaza, one of whom is reportedly expected to be returned later today. “Everyone should have their dignified burial,” she said.
