On day 30 in captivity, Emily Damari thought about the sea. The terrorist guard, who refused to let her look out the window, teased her about it being visible from the roof of the Gaza building in which she was held. The Mediterranean has been a constant in Emily’s life, just three miles from Kibbutz Be’eri, the home from which she was abducted on October 7. The home where she was shot in the hand – that has become her defiant three-finger salute – then in the leg, at the same time as her adored 11-year-old dog Chucha was murdered.
Emily Damari’s hand which she made her symbol of survival
The Hamas guard agreed to take the girl they nicknamed Fuduli (Arabic for curious) to the roof. Emily was led to believe his action, if discovered, would result in his execution, but his risk let her, wearing prayer garb, see the chimneys of Ashkelon, Sderot, Kibbutz Kfar Aza and Be’eri in the haze of explosion smoke. Panicked when she pointed at drones overhead, all Emily could think was that she was a hostage, standing on a Gaza roof in a hijab. “It was insane.”
Released on 19 January and held close by her mother Mandi – who campaigned relentlessly for her release – Emily was treated at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Hashomer, then reunited with her forever friend Romi Gonen, with whom she shared a cage in a Hamas tunnel for 14 months.
Emily and her mother, Mandi (photo- Mel D Cole)
Supporting one another through terror that made the thought of suicide feel like a reprieve, Emily and Romi’s shared ordeal was detailed in a recent documentary on Israel’s Channel 12. In her interview with Yigal Mosko, Emily spoke about everything. Fearing her family had been murdered. Keeping her sexuality a secret – wisely, as a terrorist told her he’d have no issue killing his brother if he were gay.
Emily made it her mission not to show weakness, thinking, “If I take a bullet – fine. So I die.” She could have died when she physically defended a fellow hostage by pushing a guard who had been a bodyguard to slain Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.
Emily at the grave of Kfar Aza’s security chief Shahar Aviani
Her formidable strength of character wasn’t lost on the terrorists, who also called her John Cena after the American wrestler. The other hostages had never met anyone like her. She stayed cool even when labelled a saja’iya (hero) by her captors.
Emily said Romi – who cried on camera – was the emotional one, but there was no hiding her own feelings when she introduced her father Avichai, noticeably absent in all the coverage. He was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s a decade ago and Emily said the family never understood why. “Only when October 7 happened, we understood,” she said. “God didn’t want my father to go through it.”
Emily with a portrait given as a gift
Until Mosko’s interview, Emily refused indepth media appearances, intending to stay silent until the release of her friends and neighbours, twin brothers Ziv and Gali Berman. Taken with Emily from the kibbutz in blindfolds, Gali comforted her as she recited the Shema moments before terrorists stormed her house. She has their names embroidered on the cap she wore as she stuck posters of them on a lamppost. Ziv and Gali punctuate all her conversations, so sharing her spotlight with them – and the remaining hostages – was always going to be more powerful than her silence.
Photographer Mel D. Cole
The documentary wasn’t planned when New York photographer Mel D. Cole went to take pictures of Emily in Israel. His first visit was during another tenuous ceasefire when some hostages were released, but he didn’t come from personal connection or emotional investment. “That’s not how I operate,” says Mel, who for two decades has shot everything from album covers to political protests. “When I photograph war or trauma, I don’t go looking to feel – I go to see. To document. To listen. To get clarity. My job isn’t to insert myself; it’s to tell other people’s stories.”
Until meeting her, Mel had only captured Emily second-hand, photographing people holding her picture at rallies and vigils. “But something about that trip lingered. It felt incomplete. I went back because I wanted depth – something grounded in aftermath and recovery. I thought if I could document someone who survived – whose life continued after the headlines – maybe I could tell a fuller version of this crisis.”
Their first meeting was outside the Sheba hospital. From there, he followed Emily, observing whatever she needed to do. “Ninety percent of what I shot was unstaged. A couple of times I asked for specific things – portraits of her hand – and mostly, she let me in.”
Mel was with Emily for two days. “We were meant to do more, but she cancelled a session –understandably. Emotionally, it was a lot. I met her mother, one of her brothers, a close friend, and Romi Gonen at the hospital, where their beds were still pushed together. They’d been through the same surgeries, the same silences, the same hell. You could feel the weight of that bond.”
The photo that moved Mel: Emily with her brother’s dog
One image stayed with Mel; it was of Emily playing with her brother’s dog. “She told me her own dog was killed in front of her. I’m a dog owner too – your dog is family. I understood why that loss, layered with everything else, was devastating.”
Emily by the sea – the place she longed to be when she was held hostage
Mel didn’t announce his trip to Israel before leaving. He wasn’t looking for opinions. “But when I posted some of my work – just street photos in Jaffa, Black and Brown folks at the beach – I got backlash. People assumed I was pushing a political message. I wasn’t. I was documenting life as I saw it. Still, I lost followers. People called me a Zionist. Others said I was trying to whitewash the war. All I did was share what I saw – a peaceful beach. A religious festival in Bnei Brak. That’s the thing about being a documentarian – people project anger onto your work. But I’m not giving personal commentary; I’m showing what’s there.”
Given the opportunity, Mel would have gone to Gaza too. His inclination as a photojournalist is to show both sides. For those who campaigned for Emily Damari, there was only one side – and a single objective: to see her released.
The fruit of that campaign was Emily’s Shabbat appearance at Highgate synagogue and the next day at White Hart Lane, where the loyal Spurs fan is “one of their own”. Mel wasn’t at either rapturous event, but he was with her in Israel, on a hill by the sea. Emily wrote the caption for Mel’s photo on Instagram: “I came back to life.”
