She confirmed that this was the first time the embassy had attended a Reform UK conference.
Tamar Eshet, the cousin of Israeli hostage Evyatar David, spoke to Reform members about the harsh conditions faced by her cousin and other hostages.
“I'm very grateful for her [Eshet], for her flying over yesterday to be here. And the choice of us coming to Reform’s conference is not coincidental. We do believe that we have friends here,” the deputy ambassador told the crowd.
The event started with a screening of footage released by Hamas last month in which an emaciated Evyatar David was forced to dig his own grave.
Members of the audience were shocked by the footage and some appeared to be on the verge of tears.
Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice described it as “grim” and “appalling” but said that David was “not abandoned by those of us who are doing the right thing, who are standing shoulder to shoulder with Israel to get the hostages out.”
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Reform UK Deputy Leader Richard Tice[Missing Credit]
He went on to attack Sir Keir Starmer, saying: “The only person who's abandoned Evyatar and the other hostages is our prime minister, with the disgraceful suggestion that now is a good strategic time to recognise a state of Palestine, and therefore rewarding Hamas for that sort of treatment.
“That's really all I can say, probably without breaking into tears,” the MP for Boston and Skegness in Lincolnshire added.
Eshet related the horrific story of David’s capture alongside his friend Guy Gilboa-Dalal.
As they were fleeing the Nova festival, David texted his mother at 7:42am to say that he was coming home. “The family hadn’t heard from him since”, she said.
They soon realised that their route out was blocked. “They thought it was the police, but it was actually Hamas terrorists dressed as policemen. They started shooting the cars.”
While Gilboa-Dalal and David were taken to Gaza, two other friends “were brutally murdered. They were recognised four days later because it was hard to recognise the bodies”.
She went on to describe Hamas’ “mental abuse” of the pair, reminding the audience that the terrorist organisation forced the pair to watch the release of other hostages during the last ceasefire in Gaza.
“They were a year and a half in the tunnel, and then they took them out to see light for the first time, only to make a cynical video begging for their lives, only to see other hostages being released, and then go back to captivity. I cannot imagine the suffering that they went through this day,” she added.
Her voice started to break talking about the conditions they were held in the tunnels in Gaza, which was revealed by hostages who had been held with them.
“They told us how they were held in a tunnel, 12m long, 1m wide, and at the end of the tunnel they had to dig a hole to be their restroom. And each day, they switched places because one of them had to sleep next to that.”
Hamas terrorists guarding them would abuse them “for no reason” and deprive them of food and water, physically abuse them and “make them bark like dogs”.
Eshet said that the move by European nations including the UK to recognise a Palestinian state was “irresponsible” as it hindered the negotiations to secure the release of her cousin and other hostages.
It broke her “heart to know that they made Evyatar and the other hostages [would] stay in captivity but also realising, again, how much power the world has and how they didn't use it to Evyatar and the other hostages”.
Once the floor was opened to contributions from party members, many thanked Eshet for sharing her testimony and others suggested that ordinary members of the public were scared to speak up for Israel.
One party member from Reading was applauded after telling the room he thought there were more supporters of Israel who may be afraid to speak up: “They might not shout about it because they're worried about someone throwing a brick at them or something like that.”
Another said it was an “outrage” that David Lammy and the government were “more interested in telling Israel what to do with its borders than to defend our own borders”.
The event was compered by Rafaella Stefani, who works for Tice and who told the audience that a “Reform Friends of Israel” group was in the process of being set up with the aim of getting a delegation out to Israel by the end of the year.
