Standing in front of an audience at Temple Emanu-El in New York City, former Hamas hostage Emily Damari received a standing ovation before she even began speaking. The 28-year-old survivor, freed after 471 days in captivity, addressed a packed synagogue alongside actress and activist Noa Tishbi, sharing the experience that has shaped every minute of her life since Oct. 7.
"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.
‘They shot my hand. They shot my dog.’
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Damari, whose moment of release went viral after she pushed the terrorist holding her while being transferred to the Red Cross, recounted the moment Hamas terrorists broke into her safe room on Oct. 7. Her story is almost unbearable to hear, yet she smiled through much of it. That refusal to collapse, she said, was deliberate.
"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.
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."
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.
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."
"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."
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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.
"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.
