He said: “I only get to know whatever little snippets come out.

“Like last night in the car, she just told me that she saw at least 12 dead bodies at the fence…people that she knows, dead at the side of the roads.”

Mr Hand vowed they will return to their kibbutz home if Emily is not too frightened to go back to the scene of her kidnapping.

“If the people of the south don’t go back to the south, Hamas has won and that’s not gonna happen. I’m going back,” he said.

Once popular as a holiday destination, the Be’eri kibbutz is now associated with the Oct 7 attack, in which 101 Israeli civilians and 31 security personnel were killed. During the course of the massacre, 125 of the kibbutz’s homes were also damaged or destroyed.

“We used to be a kibbutz of about 1,200 members. We lost 100 people – almost 10 percent of our community dead. Wiped out,” Mr Hand said.

One Day in October airs on Channel 4 on Oct 9 at 9pm