Emily Hand launched an education conference in Tel Aviv, expressing her sadness to the world’s most popular AI tool.
JNS Staff
(JNS)
Former hostage Emily Hand, who was kidnapped by Hamas terrorists from her bomb shelter in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023, then aged 8, interacted with the ChatGPT AI chatbot on Monday in an educational event concerning innovation, revealing a girl haunted by her chilling experiences in captivity.
“My school gave me homework to try this tool, to prepare us for the future,” Hand told the chatbot as she opened the two-day Ashmoret EduShow 2025 conference in Tel Aviv.
Hand sat alone in front of a laptop on stage, with her conversation with ChatGPT shown on a big screen.
“How do you even start imagining the future?” she asked.
“Sometimes the future begins with the things we miss most from the past. What do you want to be part of your future the most?” the AI tool responded.
“I don’t want to talk about the past so much. … I miss my kibbutz, my friends. [I miss] so many people we lost,” Hand wrote.
“It sounds like the community and its people are a huge part of your heart,” ChatGPT replied.
Hand then asked the AI software to draw her pictures of the future, after which she wrote, “Look, chat, it’s nice, but it doesn’t look real at all. … You know …, I have not returned to my home yet. … Not everyone has safely returned home yet. … And there are some who will never return. … And my dreams [are] not always good. …
“So how can you even think today, about the future?” the 10-year-old asked.
Be’eri is one of the 13 communities along the Gaza border whose residents, displaced by the terrorist massacres, have not yet returned. The state explains this is due to “rehabilitation and security restrictions.
The refugees from Be’eri are living in temporary housing in Hatzerim, a kibbutz near Beersheva.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Emily was sleeping over at her friend Hila Rotem Shoshani’s house in Be’eri, five miles from the Gaza Strip, when Hamas launched its assault, killing some 1,200 people and kidnapping 251 hostages including 40 children, among them Emily, 8, and Hila, 13.
The Hand family was initially told that Emily had likely been murdered. However, roughly a month later, the IDF confirmed that her body was not among the remains of some 120 people killed in Be’eri, and that no traces of blood had been found in the house where she was staying.
On Nov. 17, 2023, Emily spent her nineth birthday in captivity. Just over a week later, on Nov. 26, she was released after spending 50 days in Gaza, as was her friend Hila, as part of a weeklong ceasefire between Israel and Hamas that freed 105 hostages (81 Israelis, 23 Thais and one Filipino), primarily women and children, in return for 240 terrorists.
Image: Emily Hand. Credit: Courtesy of the Hand family.
