Ripping up the claim of Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar that nine-year-old hostage Emily Hand, kidnapped by Hamas, was merely a child “who was lost has now been found and returned” and that “our prayers have been answered”, Israeli spokesperson Eylon Levy clarified the reality: “Hamas didn’t answer your prayers. It answered Israel’s military pressure.”
Leo Varadkar, the Indian-origin Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, has been slammed by Israel for his post on X that tried to gloss over the hostage crisis caused by Hamas. Photo courtesy: X/@LeoVaradkar
Varadkar, the Indian-origin Taoiseach (Prime Minister) of Ireland, wrote a post on the social network X early this morning: “This is a day of enormous joy and relief for Emily Hand and her family. An innocent child who was lost has now been found and returned, and we breathe a massive sigh of relief. Our prayers have been answered.” Emily is of Irish-Israeli ethnicity.
Seeing how this post tried to gloss over the hostage crisis caused by the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, readers on X decided to provide some context. Responses on X to Varadkar’s post included the following: “The terms ‘lost’ and ‘found’ are misleading. 8-year-old Emily was ‘lost’ when she was kidnapped from a kibbutz by Hamas terrorists. She was ‘found’ 50 days later when she was exchanged by Hamas for 3 Palestinian prisoners.”
Less than an hour after Varadkar published his “lost and found” post, Levy responded: “Emily Hand wasn’t ‘lost’. She was brutally abducted by the death squads that massacred her neighbors. She wasn’t ‘found’. Hamas knew where she was all along and cynically held her as a hostage. And Hamas didn’t answer your prayers. It answered Israel’s military pressure.”
Heaping scorn on Varadkar and his prayers, the Israeli spokesperson said in another X post: “Without Israel’s military pressure on Hamas, which Ireland shamefully called ‘something approaching revenge’, little Emily Hand would still be a hostage of Hamas.”
Israeli foreign minister Eli Cohen also wrote a scathing post on X today, addressing Leo Varadkar: “Mr Prime Minister, it seems you have lost your moral compass and need a reality check! Emily Hand was not ‘lost’; she was kidnapped by a terror organization worse than ISIS that murdered her stepmother. Emily and more than 30 other Israeli children were taken hostage by Hamas, and you @LeoVaradkar are trying to legitimize and normalize terror. Shame on you!”