Hostage - Review

*****

Written by Eli Sharabi

It is rare to be both heartbroken and humbled by a book. Eli Sharabi’s Hostage however is more than just an autobiographical comment on the last two years of his life. It is the testimony of a man who has had to bear witness to some of the darkest depths of human wickedness and depravity.

Published less than a year after his release from being held hostage by the terrorists of Hamas for 491 days, Sharabi’s writing proves to be a tragically compelling commentary. Hamas seized him in their attack on Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7th 2023. Unbeknownst to Sharabi, on that same day, his wife Lianne and their two teenage daughters Noya and Yahel were brutally murdered by the terrorists. Eli’s brother Yossi who that day was also taken hostage, was murdered by Hamas while in captivity.

At less than 200 pages, the book has been precisely written and skilfully edited and crafted into its final published form. Sharabi tells of the horrors of October 7th that surrounded his being taken hostage. He then describes, in meticulous detail, the physical horrors of being shackled hundreds of feet below ground in the terror tunnels that had been painstakingly carved out by Hamas.

Sharabi speaks of those fellow hostages with whom he shared different periods of captivity, with a picture emerging of a man who not only posses a remarkable mental energy to drive himself forward amidst such an unimaginable nightmare, but who also found it in himself to support his fellow hostages wherever and whenever he could. He truly is a giant amongst men.

Sharabi also tells of his captors, some of whom he became able to profile having been held by them for so long. The hostages named the terrorists who held them with impersonal titles such as the Circle, the Triangle, or Peaky - descriptions that identify them as individuals but which deny them the humanity of a name. Such denial seems to be profoundly correct - for these people prove themselves within Sharabi’s pages to be devoid of the basic tenets of humanity.

Towards the book's final chapters, Sharabi describes the emergence of a negotiated hostage release and he writes of the planning that went into the staged charade of his being handed over to the Red Cross and ultimately to the safety of the IDF and his family. What is clear throughout the release process is the baying populace of Gaza, who even has Sharabi was being driven to his freedom, would still have lynched him in a heartbeat. On reading the book, one is reminded of the words of Mia Schem, a hostage who was released in November 2023, that “there are no innocents in Gaza”.

Sharabi’s subsequent telling of the moment that he learned that his beloved wife and daughters had been murdered makes for writing that is profound, personal and deeply painful to read.

Hostage is essential reading.

Hostage by Eli Sharabi can be purchased from all good booksellers and online channels