Eli Sharabi’s memoir of his 491 days in the captivity of Hamas in Gaza has just been published in English (translated by the prolific X poster and former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy). Published by HarperCollins, the memoir is titled Hostage. The linked HarperCollins page notes Sharabi’s upcoming speaking appearances in the United States. Bari Weiss interviewed him in a Free Press podcast that is accessible along with a transcript.
The book has been reviewed approximately everywhere. Jewish Review of Books has published an excellent review by Shai Secunda. He notes at the outset: “The Book Publishers Association of Israel recently announced that Hostage was the fastest-selling book in the history of Hebrew literature, selling twenty thousand copies in just five days.”
Elliott Abrams reviewed it for the Free Beacon in “Eli the Survivor” (the headline plays on the title of a famous short story by Philip Roth). He declares it “a classic work about captivity[.]”
Tunku Varadarajan reviewed it for the Wall Street Journal in “From a Place of Darkness.” RealClearPolitics posted it in its lineup yesterday. Here is the conclusion of Varadarajan’s review:
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Apart from the first 51 days of his captivity, during which he and an abducted Thai worker are held in the private house of a Gazan family, Mr. Sharabi spends all his time as a hostage in two different tunnels, the first of which he enters from a trapdoor under a rug in a mosque, the second from an entrance in the floor of a house. It is chilling to read that he must be carefully concealed in that first house—for his own safety. His captors, who need him alive as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Israeli government, fear that local civilians would lynch an Israeli if they saw one.
Mr. Sharabi’s time in the tunnels—440 days—is infernal. He is confined to a small, airless room with six other Israelis, all men considerably younger than Mr. Sharabi, who was 51 at the time of his kidnapping. Their legs are shackled. Food is pitifully scarce, often no more than a single dry pita per person per day. They lose so much weight that the grip of their shackles grows loose; their eyesight deteriorates and their nails fall out. The conditions are as unhygienic as can be imagined in a subterranean tunnel with no light, air, running water or sanitation. There are rats and roaches. At some point, writes Mr. Sharabi, “worm colonies start to form around us.” They even nest in his toothbrush. He can’t really see them because he’d lost his glasses during his abduction. Eventually, he says, “we surrender to them. We accept they’re here to stay.”
Mr. Sharabi and his fellow hostages develop a modus vivendi with their captors. This is inevitable, since the captors also spend time in the tunnel, albeit in an adjacent room that is much more comfortable. There are flashes of kindness, the author tells us, from individual guards—but only when other guards aren’t present. As a collective they are cruel, taunting and beating the hostages, denying them food for the slightest infraction. Mr. Sharabi takes on the role of paterfamilias, developing a close relationship with Alon Ohel, a sensitive young pianist. (Mr. Ohel is still in captivity. By the second anniversary of the Oct. 7 pogrom, he will have spent 731 days in Gaza.)
Mr. Sharabi is a man of adamant moral and spiritual strength. He shepherds his wards through the landscape of their degradation, helping to set rules for coexistence—how to share scarce food, for instance, and their hellishly tight space—and teaching them to rise above their humiliation. He writes of how, “like hungry street cats,” they coax from their captors “a wedge of clementine, a single popcorn.” Above all, he teaches them to resist their dehumanization by the evil men who tore them from their homes and loved ones. “This here is rock bottom,” he writes of his time in the tunnels. “I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it.”
Mr. Sharabi now wants life back. He says so, unabashed. Long may he have it. And swiftly may he heal from the hell in Gaza, to which he was taken against his will.
