The Irish father of a young girl kidnapped by Hamas has said he would think twice about returning to the country of his birth given the deepening tensions between Israel and Ireland.
Thomas Hand, whose daughter Emily spent 50 days in Gaza after she was kidnapped from Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, will always be deeply grateful to the Irish government for helping to bring her home.
“They were really instrumental in getting Emily back – they did a hell of a lot,” he said in an exclusive interview this week.
Thomas Hand is reunited with his daughter, Emily, after her 50 days in Hamas captivity
(Video: IDF Spokesman's Unit)
Emily, now 10, was initially thought to have been killed in the October 7 attacks, but just under a month later Hand was informed that his daughter was still alive and being held hostage in Gaza.
“Within a few days of finding out that Emily wasn’t dead but kidnapped, the first trip we took was to Ireland,” the 64-year-old told the Jewish News.
“We met with the Prime Minister, president and lots of MPs – it was purely a political visit to make them put pressure on Hamas and they definitely did.”
And yet despite his gratitude, Hand said he would “hesitate” to return to his birthplace given the current situation.
It comes just days after Israel announced the closure of its embassy in Dublin due to the worsening relations between the two countries. Defending the move, foreign minister Gideon Sa’ar earlier this week accused the Irish government of “antisemitism based on the delegitimization and dehumanization of Israel.”
In recent months, Ireland has formally recognized the State of Palestine, said that it would execute an arrest warrant on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and backed South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the ICJ.
News of the embassy’s closure did not come as a surprise to Hand.
“I expected them to do it a lot earlier,” he said, because Israel regards Ireland as doing “too many anti-Israel things.”
Father and daughter are from Kibbutz Be’eri, which was the site of some of the worst horrors on October 7 and where 101 people were murdered. That day Hand was at his home on the kibbutz, while his daughter was on a sleepover at a friend’s house nearby.
Ireland’s recognition of a Palestinian state has come in for some harsh criticism from Hand.
“Recognizing Palestine as a state, very soon after their massive terrorist attack – it was almost a reward,” he said. “They [the Irish government] must have seen all the atrocious videos that Hamas put online themselves and yet they were recognised. For me personally, it looked like they were being rewarded for what they did.”
Hand, who like his daughter is a dual Israeli-Irish citizen, was not happy about the embassy’s closure as he believes cutting the lines for diplomacy is “never a good thing."
“But I guess they had to show some kind of sign that we’re not very happy with the decisions being made by the Irish government,” he said.
Born and raised Catholic he now describes himself as an atheist and said he would “probably hesitate” before returning to Ireland due to the strength of anti-Israel feeling.
“I’m pretty well recognized nowadays. I could be very easily attacked,” he said, as he recalled coming face to face with anti-Israel demonstrators while in Ireland.
The problem, he believes, is deeply entrenched.
“They [the Irish] simply don’t understand the history of the place. Myself, before I came here, I had Palestinian sympathies – I was a sympathizer.”
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Emily Hand with the poster calling for her return from captivity at her destroyed house in Kibbutz Be'eri
(Photo: Ziv Koren)
But living in Be’eri, just a few kilometers from Gaza, changed his outlook.
“They fired thousands and thousands and thousands of rockets at us continuously,” he said.
“Ireland mistakenly sees Israel as the super power, the strength, the oppressor and of course they have sympathies for the Palestinian people,” he said. “Well, if they understood the history of the place, they’d realise there is no comparison.”
Emily is “fantastic,” he said, and just like a “normal little girl”.
Hand and his daughter were reunited just over a year ago, when she was released by Hamas on November 26.
Like so many other residents of Beeri and other kibbutzim in the area, the pair spent months living in hotel accommodation by the Dead Sea – until recently.
Back in September, they – along with many others affected by the crisis – were moved to live in “prefab houses” on another kibbutz close to Beer Sheva.
“The kibbutz expanded their fence and then new housing was built pretty rapidly, amazingly,” he said.
When asked if he would return to Be’eri, he said: “In a heartbeat. If I didn’t have Emily, I would have been back months ago.”
He said that at least 150 residents, many of whom are older and without children, have returned to Be’eri but that the overall reconstruction work has not yet begun.
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“We’re still demolishing the houses that are irreparable in Beeri. There’s no new building going on yet – to build up again that amount of housing is going to take time. But that’s the dream one day, just to go back there,” he said.
Would he not feel nervous?
“We were always nervous,” he said. “Constantly being attacked by missiles, rockets, on a weekly basis. That’s been our norm for the last 20 odd years, since Hamas came into power.
“We’re used to living with that and I don’t believe the Israeli army will ever let that happen again. Hopefully. Everything will depend on the state of the army, the state of Hamas and whatever government is in power at the time, in the future.”
-Reprinted with permission from Jewish News