If you have a daughter or a grand-daughter or a sister, close your eyes and try to picture her in hell. Deep underground, caged, struggling to breathe in the foetid air, unwashed, ragged clothes, a mane of curly hair crawling with lice, in pain from gunshot wounds to her hand and leg, starving, dehydrated, watched over by men who want to rape or murder her and may put a bullet through her head on a whim; a young woman stripped of everything that makes us human except, perhaps, some irreducible sense of who she was and may yet be again if she is saved. (A flickering hope, almost extinguished, but not quite.) And now the camera moves in closer and we see something etched on the young woman’s left arm, a tattoo: “My mum is always right,” it says.

This is Emily Damari, 28, and she had been held hostage by Hamas for over a year when I sat down on Wednesday to interview the mum who is always right.

“425 days,” says Mandy Damari, in a parched weary voice, the south London twang with its wide vowels still surprisingly strong after over 40 years living in Israel. Mandy has been using that voice a lot this week in the UK, petitioning Sir Keir Starmer; Kemi Badenoch (both PM and Leader of the Opposition mentioned Emily and Mandy in the House of Commons); Nigel Farage (Mandy was impressed); Foreign Secretary David Lammy (not impressed at all, but we’ll come to that); broadcasters; ambassadors; lobby groups – basically anyone who might be able to do something to free her daughter or at least relieve her torment with some humanitarian aid.