‘I Can’t Think About It. It Would be Too Painful’: Father of 9-Year-Old Girl Held Hostage by Hamas Heartbreaking Story on CNN

Just over a week ago, the parents of 8-year-old Emily Hand learned that their Irish-Israeli daughter had not been murdered in the October 7th attacks by Hamas on Israeli civilians but that she was being held hostage. Her father, Thomas Hand, appeared on CNN This Morning on Wednesday and shared the raw emotional nightmare he is living, putting a real human face on the ongoing horrors currently happening in Gaza by the Hamas terror group.

Hand, whose wife passed away a year ago from cancer, is doing his part to bring attention to the horror of knowing his daughter is, as he says, stuck in a tunnel under Gaza. Emily is set to turn nine years old this Friday, which makes an impossible situation even more painful.

“She won’t even know what day it is; she won’t know it is her birthday,” Hand said in a previous interview with CNN’s Clarissa Ward, in which he revealed that learning of his daughter’s death would be better than learning she was held hostage. “There could be no birthday cake, no party, no friends. She’ll just be petrified in a tunnel under Gaza. That’s her birthday.“

“We’ve been working nonstop to put pressure on all all the governments all over the world to do their best to get particularly my little Emily back home. She’s an Irish citizen,” Hand opened. “So we’ve put a lot of pressure on the Irish government. To get her back. We’re doing everything that we possibly can to get her home and all the hostages, at least the children; they could start off with the babies and the children. They’ve got babies being kidnapped over there.”

Hand has a billboard up in Times Square bringing attention to his daughter’s plight, which he explained before hosts Poppy Harlow and Phil Mattingly very thoughtfully discussed the horror he’s enduring, which he bravely shared with CNN viewers.

Harlow: Can I ask you say I know for a fact, and that is the reporting, but you also feel it. You know, parents feel something with their children that is in a bond like no other. Can you feel I don’t know.

Hand: And. No my feelings. I can’t let my feelings interfere with getting her back. It’s like a campaign. We just keep moving forward. I don’t I don’t even see the interviews. I don’t have time to look at the interview. I don’t watch the news. I haven’t I haven’t got time for it. It’s just full on. Get Emily back and.

Harlow: To that point. Part of that is going to happen in Times Square right here in the middle of New York, Right. What are you doing?

Hand: Big billboards of. I guess for sure, Emily. Uh. And marching on from there. Just. Just to keep Emily. Uh. Just to keep her alive in people’s minds and hearts.

Mattingly: We mentioned and you’ve spoken about her birthday on Friday, The billboards. Yeah. And driving and not being able to stop and think how much of that is because you have a goal here, because you have a true purpose, a North Star. And how much of that is because you don’t want to stop and think about what’s going on right now?

Hand: Yeah, I can’t I, I actually keep her in a special place. And I don’t want to imagine what she’s going through. Every day for 38 days now. I can’t think about it. It would be too painful. Uh, you know, she’s down in the tunnels of Gaza with the Hamas. I don’t want to think of what conditions she’s in and how she’s been treated, how she’s being fed. How she’d been if she’s been given water. And just as she got toothbrush and toothpaste and. Toilet facilities. Now, these are tunnels underneath Gaza. I don’t know. Could be like the cow, the train cart and the Second World War. They were just all in a cattle car and P and poo stood. I don’t know.

Harlow: I know you have said when you get her back, you will take her to Disney World and you will give her the world. And she is so lucky to have you. Thank you.

Hand: TI’m not going to send to school for at least a year. We’re. We’re going to give her the world. Just happy times. And fixer. You know, she’s. She’s not going to come back. None of them are going to come back the way they went in. They’re going to be mentally and physically and emotionally broken. And that’s going to take a lot of heckling. That’s going to take a lot of time and energy and to Pixar. But we’ll do it. Okay. We’ll do everything we can to fix.

Mattingly: We hope and pray for that moment when you get to give her the world anything you need or we can do to continue to get the message out. Please just let us know. We’re very grateful for your time. Thank you. Thanks, sir. We’ll be right back.

Watch above via CNN.