Former hostage Emily Damari returned to her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza on Sunday, 485 days after she was kidnapped.
Taking to Instagram, the British-Israeli posted a picture of her sitting outside her house, the stark image revealing bullet holes, posters used by supporters to publicise her plight in captivity, dust, debris, an overturned suitcase, graffiti on the walls and white stuffing ripped from a sofa.
Damari wrote: “I’m back. Today I returned to my home, to my apartment, to the oxygen I had and almost ran out. I’m back to the place where all my nightmares began 485 days ago and I’ve closed only a part of the circle I was waiting for to close. But like me, there are 79 more abducted who need to close their circle and wait to fill in the gap.
Screenshot: Emily Damari Instagram
She added: “We can’t stop here. We need to bring *everyone* including *everyone* home. The life for rehabilitation and the murdered for burial. I will feel my real victory only when they return.”
Alongside the Hebrew text, she added an icon or ’emoji’ of a hand with two fingers missing, symbolising the wounds she sustained during her abduction by Hamas gunmen who shot her in the hand and leg, as well as killing her pet dog.
In a call with Prime Minister Keir Starmer last week, Damari revealed she had been kept in United Nations facilities and denied essential medical treatment.
