Irish father says death of his daughter in Israel was “a blessing”

An Irish father has spoken to the media about the death of his eight-year-old daughter in the attack by Hamas on the Kibbutz Be’eri in Israel on Saturday, October 7.

Tom Hand spoke of his grief, telling CNN that his daughter Emily’s death was “a blessing” in the horrific situation that unfolded last week. HIs little girl was staying with her friend’s family in the kibbutz, near the Gaza border, on Friday evening.

It would be the last he would see his daughter, with his life and that of thousands of people changed forever. The ongoing impact of events in the Middle East will further touch millions more in what is a very uncertain time.

Mr Hand, who hailed from Dublin but has lived in Israel for the last 30 years, described how he found out about his daughter after he was pinned down under heavy gunfire and destruction for 12 hours.

He had been waiting for two days to learn of her fate.

Worse than death

With tears streaming down his face, struck by anguish and pain, Mr Hand told of his relief that Emily’s passing had been relatively quick.

He vehemently did not want her to have been kidnapped.

“They just said, we’ve found Emily, she’s dead. And I went ‘yes’… and smiled cause that is the best news of the possibilities that I knew.

“She was either dead or in Gaza, and if you know anything about what they do to people in Gaza, that is worse than death, so death was a blessing, an absolute blessing.”

The CNN video gives an immediate sense of the loss and depth of feeling, experienced by Mr Hand. It is gut-wrenching but that is the real-life situation for countless people in Israel right now, just as there is mass suffering in Gaza following the Israeli response to the Hamas attacks.

What we can be certain about is that innocent people will receive the most of the pain.

As the latest stage of the long-running conflict enters its second week, civilians are fleeing northern Gaza by any means after an Israeli warning that civilians should head south with an Israeli ground offensive expected imminently.

The UN is said to have described the order as horrendous, while the US has urged Israel to take every possible precaution to avoid killing civilians.

A deadly bloodbath is only going to get worse in the coming days with the whole region on the brink. A tinderbox awaits with peace and mercy nowhere on the horizon.