Damari was released on Jan. 19 as part of a hostage-terrorist exchange deal, after being held in Gaza for more than 15 months.By JNSDuring her 471 days in Hamas captivity, then-hostage Emily Damari lost two fingers, raised a hand to a terrorist, organized a “lice competition,” was genuinely “excited” to be brought down a Hamas tunnel, and was the unquestionable morale-lifter for her captive friends.In an extensive interview with Israeli broadcaster Channel 12 aired on Saturday, Damari, 28, opened up about her captivity in the Gaza Strip.“I was nicknamed ‘Shejaiya,’” Damari said in reference of her captors. “Which means heroes [in Arabic]. …, then they called me John Cena from WWE,” after the American professional wrestler and actor.The British-Israeli woman was born and raised in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, adjacent to the Gaza Strip. She was shot in her left hand by gunmen during the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. She was then kidnapped from her Kfar Aza home.Growing up in the “Gaza Envelope,” the area within seven km. (4.3 miles) of the Strip, Damari was used to hearing sirens warning of incoming rockets and mortar shells. But on the morning of Oct. 7, 2023, she understood that something was different.“My hand started to shake on its own, it wasn’t in my control,” she recalled. She messaged her good friend Gali Berman to come be with her because she was scared.“He arrived and then I started hearing [terrorists] smashing my window,” Damari related. Her dog, “Chucha,” lay between Damari and Berman, as the terrorists opened fire.“‘Gali, they smashed my hand, they smashed my hand,’ I yelled at him; then I probably passed out for a few seconds,” she said.Next they shot her dog and abducted Damari and Berman in her own car into Gaza. The bullet that pierced her dog entered Damari’s leg, she said.Gali’s twin brother, Ziv, was also pushed into the car, as Damari flouted the kidnappers’ orders to remain with a cover on their eyes. “I told Ziv that Gali is with us and I told Gali that Ziv is with us, several times, so they’ll know,” she said.The three captives were separated and Damari was taken to a Gazan family’s home. Then someone ordered her to wear traditional Islamic garments and she was taken to Gaza City’s Al-Shifa Hospital.The 28-year-old was sedated; when she woke up, she was told she had lost two fingers. “I replied, ‘Cool.’ I’m an abductee in Gaza, missing two fingers—what could be worse?” she told Channel 12.Hostage Emily Damari in Islamic garb at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City after she was kidnapped from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza. Photo taken by Hamas and obtained by the IDF.British-Israeli hostage Emily Damari at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City, in Islamic clothing. Photo taken by Hamas and obtained by the IDF.Former hostage Romi Gonen was the only Israeli who saw Damari at the hospital, having also undergone surgery there. Gonen recalled her thoughts of her hazy encounter with Damari, as both abductees woke up from sedation.“I thought to myself, ‘Who is this nut who just said she was cool with not having two fingers?’ She asked me where I was from and I told her, ‘Kfar Vradim,’ [situated in the Upper Galilee, near the Lebanese border],” Channel 12 cited Gonen as saying.Damari replied: “Shit, [Hamas] reached Kfar Vradim.”‘Wow, I’m in the Hamas tunnels!’Damari related that she regularly bombarded her captivators with questions: “How do you build your tunnels? How much money do you make from it?” Damari said that they “got sick” of her, telling her that she is forbidden to ask questions and to leave them alone.In one incident, another hostage disobeyed an order of one the captors in charge. He started pushing the hostage and Damari “flipped out,” she recalled.“This guy was the ex-bodyguard of [slain Hamas political leader] Ismail Haniyeh, a strong fella, and I pushed him. I started talking in Hebrew, not Arabic, saying, ‘What are you doing?’ He caught my hand. I pushed his hand away—until we were separated [by other captors]. I started to raise my voice and told him, ‘I will yell that there are hostages here if you don’t bring your commander here and get us out of this house.’”A week and a half or two weeks later, the captives were transferred to a different location, Damari said.She said she did not want to show any signs of weakness to her captors. “They will shoot me? Okay, so I will die. But I won’t be in captivity, thank you very much,” she said.Damari related that when she was taken underground, she went there thinking, “Wow, I’m in the Hamas tunnels!” As a “Gaza Envelope” resident, she had always wanted to see them, albeit not as a hostage, she said.“When I saw the girls in this small cage, I uttered, ‘How’s it going?’ and they were like, ‘What’s wrong with you, are you OK? You’re the first to enter a tunnel like this,’” she said.Feelings of guiltOver the course of her captivity, Damari did not know whether her mother survived the Oct. 7, 2023, onslaught. One day, the terrorists allowed her and the other captives to watch reruns of Israeli broadcasts.Suddenly, Damari saw her mother holding a picture of her abducted daughter on television. Damari started shaking and could not breathe. It was her most moving experience in captivity, she said.Many days were long and boring. Damari was in charge of so-called culture events.“We had a severe lice outbreak in the Hamas tunnels. We said, well, there’s nothing we can do. I came up with this stupid idea to do a live ‘National Geographic’: to take a louse from her head and hers, and have them fight. See which one wins. We placed them on a card. I can’t tell you whose it was, but that louse totally devoured the other,” Damari said.Damari was released on Jan. 19 as part of a hostage-terrorist exchange deal, after being held in Gaza for more than 15 months.As she traveled recently to London to thank people who were active in the pursuit of her freedom, she said that she was filled with guilt over the Berman twins, who are still held hostage in Gaza.“Getting on the plane, sitting down, eating, drinking—all of it comes with a lot of guilt. So I can’t tell you it’s not fun or not pleasant, you know? But still …” she said.The post Intrepid ex-hostage Emily Damari relates how she raised hand to terrorist appeared first on World Israel News.