I Survived

A harrowing but ultimately hopeful account of a British Israeli former hostage’s 471 days in Hamas captivity in Gaza and the resilience that kept her alive to see freedom.

On October 7th, 2023, Emily Damari was captured by Hamas and held what would become an agonizing 471 days of fear, hunger, and perseverance. In this daring memoir, Damari describes her capture, where she was shot twice—in the hand and leg—and lost two fingers. She details the twenty-eight places in which she was held, from ravaged apartments—where she and her fellow hostages were bombed—to cages packed tightly with other captives, including young children, to the ninety days she spent deep underground in the tunnels of Gaza. 

Damari reveals how she passed the long and terrifying days, as bombs rained down, her wounds festered in the absence of proper medical treatment, her hunger pangs overtook her when food supplies dwindled, and she feared the possibility of sexual assault and for the fate of her family.

 Amidst this horror, Damari navigated complex dynamics with her captors and developed surprising relationships with them, and forged an indelible bond with a fellow hostage, Romi Gonen, with whom she developed a sisterhood strong enough to motivate each other’s survival. To survive her fear of being outed as a gay woman, the constant weight of war, starvation, and captivity, Damari developed a profound strength that testifies to humanity’s endurance in the face of unspeakable deprivation.