Eli Sharabi’s Hostage, the first memoir of captivity in Gaza in the aftermath of Oct. 7, appeared in Israel in May, just four months after his release; the English translation will be published in the U.S. on the second anniversary of the Hamas attack. A taut, immersive chronicle of endurance, the book also serves as a window into the Israeli view of the war.
The author was pulled away from his wife and two daughters in the first hours of the attack. For the next 491 days, with rare exceptions, the only people Sharabi saw were other hostages and Hamas militants—the same parties that have remained front and center in the viewfinder of Jewish Israelis for two solid years, even as most of the world shifted its focus to the Palestinian civilians also confined in Gaza, and dying in the tens of thousands under Israeli fire.
During captivity Sharabi ached for his life in Be’eri—which as a kibbutz, or commune, is the original expression of the interdependence on which Israel functions. Another is the army, which he looked for frantically, and in vain, as he was thrown into a car along with a Thai farmworker.
In the first of the excerpts below, they have just arrived in the Strip. In the next, 51 days have passed. He has been hidden in a family’s home, sometimes bound with rope in excruciating pain. Sharabi, who is terrified of being held in a tunnel, is being moved to one. He travels with a fellow Israeli hostage, one of several who will be his intermittent companions. In January, he’s been moved again, this time to a space where he will remain for eight months. Deliberately underfed, he loses a great deal of weight, but finds a different sustenance in traditions that bind even secular Israeli Jews.
Sharabi also passes hours working to shore up the spirits of fellow prisoners, and to glean something of what’s happening outside from the mood of his jailers …
October 2023
The vehicle stops. The terrorists pull me and the Thai worker out. The sun is beating down on me. I’m sweating: it was hot in the car, I had a heavy blanket over me, and another person chucked on top of that the whole way. I’m also sweating from fear. The terrorists lead me out of the vehicle, still wrapped in the blanket. There’s a huge commotion around us. I hear a noisy crowd, ecstatic, and suddenly hands start pulling me. Many hands. I’m being dragged into a sea of people who start thumping my head, screaming, trying to rip me limb from limb. They’re fighting over me. Cursing and whistling all around. My heart is pounding, my mouth is dry, I can barely breathe. I’m a goner. The Hamas terrorists try to push the mob back, and after a struggle, they pull me back into their own hands, drag me, and quickly smuggle me into a building.
This is our first stop in the Gaza Strip. It’s a mosque. I realize it because I can see the floor through my blindfold—which isn’t too tight, at this point—and I recognize the colorful prayer rugs. Having just managed to save us from getting lynched, the terrorists slam the doors behind us.
Inside the mosque, it’s quiet for a moment. I can hear my own breathing and the Thai worker sobbing next to me. The terrorists take us into a side room, where they remove our blindfolds and order us to strip. I blink, look around, and see that we’re in what looks like a grand boardroom, with a long table and luxurious chairs, like I’ve just stumbled into a board meeting at an American corporate office, not a mosque. In Gaza. With trembling hands, I remove my shirt and pants and strip down to my boxers in front of the terrorists’ prying eyes. They start interrogating me.
November 2023
We climb down a long ladder, into the shaft. I’m scared. Every nightmare, every fear, every fevered thought climbs down with me, step by step, down the ladder. I brace myself for total darkness, for the Hamas tunnels I’ve seen on TV, the ones we’ve all heard about. And now it’s me—me!—going down into them. Any moment now, the trapdoor will shut above me, and I’ll be buried there.
The anxiety is all-consuming. After two tense minutes of carefully climbing down, we reach the bottom, about one hundred feet underground. It’s pitch black. The terrorists have only headlamps to light the way. We walk a few steps, then descend a flight of stairs. A few more steps—another staircase. After the stairs, we keep moving forward, and I feel the ground sloping downward. We’re going even deeper underground.
We spend several stressful, silent minutes walking through a dark corridor with arched concrete walls. Then, at last, a faint white glow appears ahead. It’s a fluorescent light, growing brighter as we approach. The corridor begins to widen, and we enter a space that’s clearly been adapted for living. There’s lighting. A real floor. Ceramic tiles on the walls. A sink. A kitchen. A bathroom.
They order us to sit on a mattress in the middle of this large room.
It’s hot. Very hot. I assume it’s from the stress and fear. I take off my shirt, but I’m still hot. I take off my pants too and sit in my boxers. Almog sits beside me. We wait. I look around. The room we’re in is long and narrow. At one end there’s a large TV mounted on the wall; at the other end, where we came from, is a wide opening that leads to the corridor. The corridor has other doors, to the kitchen and a bathroom. There is another narrow corridor extending from the room, seemingly leading to another space. The terrorist we call “the Triangle” and the one who greeted us at the ladder, who we later call “Smiley,” bring us water to drink and some wafers to eat. I don’t feel like eating. I just keep drinking. I’m still boiling. I can’t believe I’m going to stay here. That I’m going to spend tonight here, and who knows how many more after that.
I can barely breathe.
We hear more people approaching. In the tunnels, we quickly learn, every sound carries, clear and sharp, from one end to the other. The sealed acoustics amplify everything. Almog hears it before me, because my hearing has been a bit weak for years, and I guess the explosions have made it weaker still. Almog hears the creak of the trapdoor opening, hushed whispers, approaching footsteps. I hear them too. Two young men are brought into the room and placed on the mattress across from us. We study them in silence. One is missing an arm. They glance around, disoriented. I wonder: Are they hostages too? Are they Israeli?
After the captors leave again, one of them turns to us. “You’re Israelis, right?” he asks. We nod.
“I’m Ori, and this is Hersh,” he says, pointing at the young man who is missing an arm. “Who are you?”
“I’m Almog.”
“I’m Eli,” I say. “Where are you from?”
“We were at the Nova Festival,” says Ori. “So was I,” says Almog.
They look at me. “I’m from Kibbutz Be’eri,” I say.
January–September 2024
Difficult days lie ahead.
This tunnel lacks basic supplies and equipment. It doesn’t even have a landline for our captors, and they spend several days trying to set one up. Our only food is what they brought with them from the previous tunnel. In the kitchenette across from our cell, there’s no gas. No way to cook the dry food. Like before, our captors sleep in the space next to ours. There’s no corridor connecting the rooms, just a narrow opening at the edge of the wall.
For the first three days in this tunnel, we eat nothing but biscuits. Two or three in the morning. Two or three at night. Biscuits and water. That’s it. After three days, they bring us some raw ful beans. I start feeling weak. My body needs real food. I think it takes them nearly two weeks to get pitas into the tunnel. They’re stale, probably foraged from the street. I don’t care. I savor the single pita bread I’m given and devour it slowly. Besides the pitas, they give us a can of cream cheese. I break my pita into pieces, dip each one into the cheese, and chew slowly. I save the last morsel for the end of the day, just to fall asleep with something in my stomach.
After two weeks of surviving on biscuits, one daily can of cheese between four men, and a handful of stale pitas, a gas burner finally arrives. We hope things will start to improve. They clearly have supply issues. That’s clear soon enough. Unlike in the previous tunnel, there are no regular deliveries. All they have is what they manage to scavenge outside. And outside, there’s hardly anything. Hunger sets in. Not from deliberate starvation, but from scarcity. For them too. Sure, they eat more than us, and better. But even they don’t have much. The shortages make them more irritable. Less patient with us. We’re careful not to cross them, not to speak out of line, not to make any requests.
We’re impatient too. The hunger turns each man inward. Empathy dries up. These are hard moments. When everything you are, everything I am, is reduced to one thing: hunger. Nothing else matters.
Slowly, our captors manage to sneak in more supplies. Because our room faces the kitchenette, we see them cooking and eating. They don’t like that. We’re too exposed to the contrast between their food and ours. They cook flatbread over the burner. Sometimes, when they have sugar and oil, they make sweets—for themselves. Right in front of us. The Mask and Smiley remain nice to us, even in these conditions. Sometimes they sneak us treats: halva, a scoop of sesame seeds, a small pita. But food is scarce. The stale pitas that arrive every few days give us a glimpse of the world above: The bakeries aren’t operating. There’s no food coming in. Sometimes they manage to bring rice or pasta; they cook some and give us a little.
We have no mattresses. At night, we spread our blankets on the ground and sleep on them, in pain. Our toothpaste from the previous tunnel runs out after three weeks. We brush our teeth with plain brushes. After a few months, we get a new tube, but it only lasts a month, even after we agree to ration it and use toothpaste once every other day. There’s no toilet paper. We clean up in the bathroom with a water bottle. There are jerricans in the tunnel: some for drinking, hauled down by our captors, and others, not safe to drink, for washing and toilet use. We reuse the same water to wash our hands, clean ourselves off after using the toilet, and refill the water tank, since there is no running water.
Our rations keep shrinking, and with them, the frequency of our bathroom visits. We do not share toilets with our captors. We have ours; they have theirs. They clean theirs, not ours. Soap is a rare commodity. When they have some, they give us a little. At first more often. Then much less. Eventually, not at all.
Our hygiene deteriorates. Our bodies are filthy. We go for weeks without showering. Our clothes are never washed. Our space is never cleaned. And there’s no way to clean it. Everything becomes gross. In the last tunnel, we got to shower twice in forty days. Here, not even that. We shower once every six or eight weeks. With a bucket. And a bit of soap. Every time we shower, we’re shocked by how dirty our bodies are. The layers of grime. I scrub and I scrub with the little soap I have. I never knew the human body could collect so much filth.
We constantly pray we won’t get sick. We realize how easily it could happen. Diseases we’d never worry about at home, infections that shouldn’t occur, could absolutely happen here. I’m spared most of them, thankfully. But not the others. Or, Alon, and Elia suffer from constant diarrhea. Frequent vomiting. Fungal infections. Nails falling off. My problem is mostly dizziness. I think it’s because I’m so weak.
Another week passes. And then another. The days crawl by and pile atop of each other. The cesspit under the toilet stops draining. Everything spills over. The raw sewage rises to the surface, adding to the unbearable stink, which spreads and worsens with every passing day. I don’t know how to describe it. How do you convey what it feels like to be swallowed in such a suffocating odor? It’s a stench you never get used to.
November 2023
Until release
In all the hard moments—the fights, hunger, humiliating searches, and conflicts between us—we try to create moments of strength. Moments of togetherness.
Many of our shared moments revolve around tradition and faith. I’m not religious, but I’m no stranger to Jewish tradition. I come from a traditional family. I spent many hours in my childhood in a synagogue on Shabbat and Jewish holidays. I make Kiddush with Lianne and the girls every Friday night. And even though I lead a very secular life, and I’m perfectly happy with that life, these traditional spaces give me strength. They give me fulfillment.
Even in the early days of captivity, I find myself murmuring Shema Yisraelagain and again, almost unconsciously. Like a mantra to keep me grounded. Every morning, Elia recites the traditional Jewish morning prayers out loud. He grew up religious and knows them by heart. He recites the prayers, and we stand and answer, “Amen.” That’s how we start every day.
And every Friday night, we do Kiddush. No matter what we’ve been through during the week, what fights we did or didn’t have, whatever our frustration or sorrow or pains, we gather in silence. The four of us. We listen to Elia, holding a cup of water in both hands, reading in a trembling, quiet voice:
Yom hashishi vayechulu hashamayim vehaaretz vekhol tzeva’am …
The sixth day, and the heavens and the earth and all that filled them were complete …
Before Kiddush, I sing “Eshet Chayil,” a traditional hymn from Proverbs. “She is good to him, never bad, all the days of her life. She looks for wool and flax, and sets her hand to them with a will …” I sing with my eyes closed, thinking about the women in my life: my mom, my sisters, Lianne, Noiya and Yahel. Elia doesn’t know the song. I teach him the words every Friday, till he starts joining me and we sing together.
Then we break the bread, or rather, a slice of pita we’ve saved especially for the Hamotzi blessing. Like on Jewish holidays, when we share memories with each other, every Shabbat we tell stories. We each share what Shabbat was like at home—the foods we cooked or ate, the customs we observed.
On Saturday nights, when the Jewish Sabbath ends, Elia chants the zemirot, the traditional table hymns. Sometimes we join him. Songs I remember my father singing. And that memory comes as a pinch of sweetness.
I don’t know if I feel God in those moments. But I feel power. I feel a connection. To my people. To our tradition. To my identity. It connects me to my family. To my childhood. To my roots. It reminds me why I must survive. Who I’m surviving for. What I’m surviving for. It brings back glowing memories of childhood. Of my father. Of my mother. Of a white tallit during Shabbat prayers. Wine in a goblet. Candles on the windowsill. Opening the ark. Torah scrolls. A cantor singing. A white tablecloth spread over a table overflowing with good food. Everything that feels so far from here.
And it brings to life the whole cast of characters waiting for me. Mom. My siblings. Lianne. The girls. I imagine returning to all of them. I imagine their hugs. I imagine the souls I love most enveloping me in light, whispering:
Shabbat shalom, Eli. Shabbat shalom.
It’s so good to have you home.
February 2025
Saturday morning arrives. Our captors wake us up in the dark tunnel at 05:00 to start getting ready. We take our plastic bags, and together with our captors begin the long ascent to the top. There are sections of this tunnel with very low ceilings, so low that you practically have to crawl. We get covered in mud. We keep walking and crawling through furrows of bare, cold, filthy earth, inching up toward ground level. It’s a long ascent: the tunnel is extremely deep.
When we finally reach the exit, we get given new, clean clothes for the release itself. Ugly brown suits, the perfect complement to our anyway-disheveled look.
We make our way through garbage dumps and junkyards until we reach a vehicle. The car windows are blacked out. Our eyes are blindfolded, our heads pinned down. The terrorists are not only afraid of the IDF, but also of the frenzied mob that would attack the car if it realized who’s inside.
The car stops. The terrorists remove us from the vehicle and remove our blindfolds. After a few minutes of standing around, the dress rehearsal begins. Hamas operatives give us stage directions for every moment of the ceremony: how to get out of the car, walk up to the stage, and go up the stairs, what to say, what they’ll say, how to wave as instructed, when to smile. Everything. It’s a meticulously stage-managed spectacle.
The team handling our release includes one Hamas member who speaks Hebrew. He’s in charge of our media messaging and interviews. He sits down with us to coach us for the questions he’ll ask onstage. The questions are similar to those we were asked on Thursday night, for the “movie shoot.” “Say this like that,” he corrects us. “And that like this. Emphasize this here. Add that there.” He drills us again and again until he’s satisfied with our answers and happy that they meet the needs of the production.
We each have to answer four or five questions. I have only one goal: to do whatever it takes, and give them whatever they want, to ensure a smooth release. To survive. To get home.
Adapted from Hostage, available Oct. 7 from HarperCollins
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