The reviewer was a 17-year-old hostage for three weeks in Jordan at the hands of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Black September 1970.
On October 7, 2023, 51-year-old Eli Sharabi was viciously wrestled by Hamas terrorists from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri, from his wife, Lianne, his daughters, 16-year-old Noiya and 13-year-old Yahel, and from his life of peaceful coexistence.
For 491 days, he was held in captivity in Gaza, starved almost throughout, beaten, and subjected to psychological abuse.
Sharabi wrote Hostage, his recounting of that harrowing experience, shortly after his release. His comportment, sustained hope, and heroic emotional strength throughout his captivity are inspiring.
Everyone must read this book to understand the cruel and inhuman treatment that the hostages suffered at Palestinian hands in the 21st century; murdered and treated as they were in the Holocaust. For anyone unable to grasp that there are those who kill and abuse Jews merely because of who they are, this book shows that this is so.
Sharabi’s story is horrific right from the start. On Shabbat Simchat Torah in 2023, after hearing sirens, Sharabi sat with his wife and two daughters in their safe room, watching the news on television and reading incoming WhatsApps.
They began to realize that it was not just another day of missile fire from Gaza just beyond the kibbutz fence. It was an onslaught of terrorists going house to house, shooting, battering, molesting, and killing grandparents, parents, and children, burning down the homes of people who chose not to come out.
Eleven terrorists
Eleven terrorists broke into the Sharabi home. Two men grabbed Sharabi and dragged him out barefoot. He yelled to his family, promising to return, and a terrorist hit him, causing the glasses he was wearing to fall to the ground. He was beaten, kicked in the ribs, and blindfolded.
He was laid on the floor of a car, covered with a blanket to conceal him, and taken into Gaza, where he was incarcerated in a child’s room on the second floor of a house.
Still blindfolded, he was stripped down to his boxers, his hands painfully tied behind his back, and his feet tightly bound, cutting into his arms and legs. For three days, he remained in agonizing pain.
Sharabi was kept in the home of a well-to-do, educated family, all of whom speak English. Eventually, the blindfolds and rope were removed, but he remained shackled. He was given some clothes and flip-flops but was forced to shave all the hair on his body.
On October 31, an Israeli bomb hit the building next door. Following a huge explosion, the building collapsed, shaking the house where Sharabi was imprisoned. He was quickly taken downstairs to a dirt-floored basement.
On the way down, he heard the voices of a captive Israeli mother and child on the family’s television. He cried for the first time, realizing that women and children were also hostages – and wondering whether his wife and daughters were among them.
Seven weeks later
After seven weeks of captivity, a ceasefire took hold, during which some hostages were released. Not Sharabi, who was taken with another hostage, Almog Sarusi, to a mosque. There, a trap door was opened to a tunnel. Sharabi was terrified. “No. No, no. Not a tunnel.” But they pointed a rifle at him, and he was forced to descend into the darkness.
He ended up in a small, tiled, fluorescent-lit space with thin mattresses on the floor. Five other hostages soon joined: Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino, Alon Ohel, Or Levy, and Eliya Cohen.
Their bare feet were shackled.
Three days later, Sarussi, Goldberg-Polin, and Levi were taken away, told that they were being released.
Sharabi became hopeful that he, too, would be released eventually.
But those three Israelis would not be released. They would be murdered by Hamas.
Mosque destroyed
On January 5, 2024, the mosque atop their tunnel was destroyed, collapsing onto the tunnel’s trapdoor. Panicked, the captors moved the hostages to the opposite end of the tunnel and up a 100-foot ladder into a reinforced Hamas structure next to a school.
Sharabi saw the destruction all around – massive piles of steel, concrete, and glass. As they walked, he was terrified that they might be lynched by the locals as they very nearly were when first kidnapped into Gaza.
Entering a building, they were interned in a low, narrow tunnel where their space was smaller, and conditions were even worse. No mattresses; only blankets. Even their captors were upset.
With no cooking gas or supplies, they ate only biscuits brought from the other tunnel. Nearly two weeks passed before the captives were fed some dry pitas and a bit of cheese.
Ample food for captors
Previously, they had been fed two small meals a day: a fresh pita half-filled with cheese or hummus, and sometimes pasta. But in their new prison, the food supply for the hostages remained problematic, though the captors had ample food.
Hunger set in for the hostages. The toothpaste ran out. There was no toilet paper. Soap was a rarity. Their bodies, clothes, and their living area were dirty and rank, being allowed to wash themselves off only every couple of months.
The cesspit under the toilet stopped draining. Everything spilled over. The raw sewage rose to the surface, adding to the unbearable stench.
“At some point, worm colonies start to form around us... Tiny white worms multiplying in the toilet tank, in the stagnant sewage drains, by the sink, on the floor, on our toothbrushes,” Sharabi writes.
Soon their food ration was reduced to only one pita or a pita and a half per day. The pleas of the starving, weak, and dizzy hostages went unanswered.
Returned to tunnels
Eight months later, they were returned to their previous tunnel, but the space available to them had been halved. The Hamas captors ate heartily from United Nations packages, while degrading the hostages, making them beg for an extra slice of pita or offering a sliver of halva if they would recite a verse from the Koran.
Sharabi refused to play into their hands.
The hostages lived in constant fear.
One day, Sharabi writes, one of the captors “…smashes his phone on the ground and storms into our cell. I happen to be lying closest to the door. Before we can react, he lets loose on me, beating me senseless. Punching me. Kicking me in the ribs. I curl up, screaming in agony, trying to crawl away, my feet still shackled. He keeps kicking me... Everything hurts, especially my ribs. Some are definitely broken. It’s hard to breathe.
"My body starts to shake uncontrollably... For a whole month, I can barely get up, sit, stand, or eat. I can’t sleep at night because of the pain. Every breath hurts. Every movement. Every touch. Every trip to the bathroom comes at great effort and pain. Most of the time, I just lie curled up on the mattress.”
The hostages were subjected to searches that humiliated and abused them psychologically. The captors did everything imaginable to make them despair and feel truly abandoned.
Sharabi the survivor
Through it all, Sharabi never seriously considered escape. Even if he could have somehow overpowered his captors and taken their rifles, how could he have gotten back to Israel? But he never lost hope. Even as he was being taken hostage, he had told himself: “There is no more regular Sharabi. From now on, I’m Sharabi the survivor.”
He continually thought about his wife and their daughters, recalling the fond times and imagining himself back with them. He tried to reassure his fellow hostages that they would all go home to their families.
The four adopted rituals and latched onto certain religious traditions to help keep their hopes alive.
Daily, they tried to think of something good that had happened to them that day. They recited the morning blessings every day, made “Kiddush” over water every Friday night, and sang havdalah songs at the end of Shabbat. Those moments gave Sharabi strength, as they tied him to his family, his people, and his roots and revived him.
Flashback to 1970
I remember how, as a 17-year-old in September 1970, having been hijacked by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and taken off our hijacked planes in the middle of the previous night, convinced we were being taken to be shot, the “Kiddush” that the nine other men and I made on a Friday night over a pita had uplifted me when we were locked in a small room in a Palestinian refugee camp with only blankets on the floor.
Over time, Sharabi and the other hostages were able to sense the moods of their captors and know whom to ask for what – such as a wedge of a clementine or a kernel of popcorn – and when.
The hostages developed relationships with some of their captors, sometimes conversing with them about life, Israel, family, religion, and other topics.
As Sharabi describes it, and as I know from my own experience, one sees a different aspect of these people who, in the end, are human beings.
However, it was not Stockholm syndrome (in which the victim develops a positive bond with the captor or abuser). “I don’t identify with them. I don’t pity them. I’m not confused about who they are or what they really want... I see only pure evil in their eyes,” Sharabi writes.
He has no doubt that “No matter how close we feel, if it came to it, none of them would blink before putting a bullet in our brains.” At the same time, Sharabi writes, he would not hesitate to kill them if it would help get him home.
Sharabi and Levi to be released
On February 1, 2025, Sharabi and Levi were told that they would be released. They were given additional food, tracksuits, and shoes. A few days later, they were separated from the other two. Sharabi tried to reassure Alon, who was terrified of being left alone.
They were taken to yet another unfinished tunnel, where mice and cockroaches abounded, and were ordered to dig a pit to use as a toilet. They were given two reeking mattresses but no blankets.
On February 8, they were driven to a square. Even their captors were afraid of the Gazan civilians: Though the car windows were blacked out, Sharabi and Levi were ordered to keep their hoods on and their heads down, remaining completely hidden.
Humiliating ceremony
They were led onto a stage. Masses of ecstatic Palestinians milled around and climbed on utility poles to watch the spectacle. At a humiliating send-off ceremony, the two hostages were forced to provide rehearsed responses to questions.
Following a short ride in a Red Cross car, they were turned over to the IDF. Shortly after, Sharabi learned that his wife and two daughters, the thoughts of whom had kept him going all this time, had been murdered by Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7. It was then that he hit rock bottom.
Even after this news, though, Sharabi understood that he must survive. He spent 40 minutes at their grave sites, and then told himself that it was time to go. “Now, life.”
The author provides only snippets of his personal history. He appears to have served in army intelligence and was a manager involved in developing the Iron Dome. He suggests that his life experience gave him the skills to cope, help fellow hostages, and deal with his captors.
Sharabi’s straightforward, unembellished writing style enables the reader to feel his pain and his resolve. His formidable, determined, and emotionally disciplined personality can be discerned. His care for others helped his fellow hostages not to wallow in despair.
Before reviewing Sharabi’s book, I had watched an interview with him. He tried, as he does in Hostage, to project an upbeat attitude, but his haunted eyes told a different story.
I wish Eli Sharabi the strength and fortitude to compartmentalize so that he can move on in life and not have the pain surface too often.
David Raab, PhD, is author of Terror in Black September: The First Eyewitness Account of the Infamous 1970 Hijackings.
- HOSTAGE
- By Eli Sharabi
- Harper Influence
- 208 pages; $21