A day of reflection, Lammy says one year after Hamas attack

Foreign Secretary David Lammy has said it was “a day of deep reflection and pain”, as he commemorated the victims of Hamas’s 7 October attack on Israel.

Lammy described the attack last year, which killed about 1,200 people, as “the worst attack on the Jewish community since the Holocaust”.

Speaking at South Tottenham Synagogue, he said he was thinking of the “many hostages that are still held in Gaza” – particularly Emily Damari, the only British-Israeli hostage still in captivity.

Ms Damari, 28, was kidnapped from a kibbutz and taken into Gaza by Hamas along with 250 others. Her family have “no word of her fate or how she is doing”, Lammy added.

A total of 97 hostages remain unaccounted for.

Israel responded to Hamas’s attack with a military campaign in Gaza, which has killed thousands in the Palestinian territory.

“This is a painful day for the Jewish community across this country and across the diaspora,” Lammy told reporters.

“It is a day of deep reflection and pain thinking about 7 October, the worst attack on the Jewish community since the Holocaust,” he added.

Addressing a memorial event in London on Sunday, Ms Damari’s mother, Mandy Damari, said that hostages that were released last November told her they had contact with her in captivity.

“Every day is living hell not knowing what Emily is going through,” she said.

She said Britain and other countries need to do more to secure the release of her daughter and the other hostages.

“How is it that she is still imprisoned there after one year? Why isn’t the whole world, especially Britain, fighting every moment to secure her release? She’s one of their own,” she said.

She told the crowd how her daughter, who was born in Israel and lived there, loved to visit the UK – her “second home across the sea”.

Ms Damari loved watching Spurs play, going to the pub and shopping at Primark, her mother added.

On Sunday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the country must “unequivocally” stand with the Jewish community and described 7 October as the “darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust”.

“As a father, a husband, a son, a brother – meeting the families of those who lost their loved ones last week was unimaginable. Their grief and pain are ours, and it is shared in homes across the land,” Sir Keir said.