Hostage E-Book

Eli Sharabi

• Herausgeber: Swift Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 243

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2025

Beschreibung

'A taut, immersive chronicle of endurance' Time Magazine 'One of the most compelling and unflinching books you will ever read' Daily Telegraph On October 7th, 2023, Hamas terrorists stormed Kibbutz Be'eri, shattering the peaceful life Eli Sharabi had built with his British wife, Lianne, and their teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel. Dragged barefoot out of his front door while his family watched in horror, Sharabi was plunged into the suffocating darkness of Gaza's tunnels. In total he endured a gruelling 491 days in captivity - all the while holding onto the hope that he would one day be reunited with his loved ones. In the first memoir by a released Israeli hostage, and the fastest-selling book in Israel's history, Sharabi offers a searing firsthand account of survival under unimaginable conditions - starvation, isolation, physical beatings, and psychological abuse at the hands of his captors. Eli Sharabi's story is one of hunger and heartache, of physical pain, longing, loneliness and a helplessness that threatens to destroy the soul. But it is also a story of strength, of resilience, and of the human spirit's refusal to surrender. It is about the camaraderie forged in captivity, the quiet power of faith, and one man's unrelenting decision to choose life, time and time again. Reminiscent of Elie Wiesel's Night, Hostage is a profound witness to history, so that it shall be neither forgotten nor erased.

Leseprobe

In memory of Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel, and of my brother YossiIn my heart forevermore

Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 AcknowledgmentsAbout the Author

Hostage

‌1

Five terrorists enter with weapons drawn. We are in our pajamas; they come with uniforms, balaclavas, and Kalashnikovs.They’ve found us: me; my wife, Lianne; our beautiful daughters, Noiya and Yahel; and our dog. We’re in our safe room, a reinforced shelter in our house that is supposed to protect us from rocket attacks—not intruders like these. The dog barks in distress. She doesn’t like strangers. The sound draws the terrorists’ fire, and the sound of their gunshots ricochets off the walls. It’s deafening. Lianne and I jump onto the girls to shield them, checking they’re not hurt and shouting at the terrorists to stop. Begging them. Don’t be afraid, they reply in Arabic, and demand that we hand over our cell phones.

I look into my daughters’ eyes. Noiya is sixteen years old. Yahel is just thirteen. I try to reassure them, telling them everything will be OK. They don’t scream. They don’t cry. They don’t even speak. They are frozen in terror.

I will never forget that look of terror in their eyes.

‒

I know that everyone talks about it starting at 06:29.

I don’t remember 06:29.

I remember my wife’s cell phone beeping like crazy and waking us all up on Shabbat morning. It’s the Jewish holiday of Simchat Torah. October 7, 2023.

Lianne installed an app that blares whenever there’s a missile alert in our area. I never liked it. It freaks everyone out at home. But Lianne insisted. And today, that’s what wakes us up. Lianne leaps out of bed to wake Noiya, sleeping on the top floor, and I wake Yahel, asleep in her ground-floor bedroom, like us. Lianne comforts Noiya, I calm Yahel. There are rockets from Gaza, we explain. They know the drill. We rush to Yahel’s bedroom, which doubles as our safe room: me, Lianne, Noiya, Yahel, and the dog. No one panics. This isn’t our first rodeo. We’ve been here so many times before. Our home in Kibbutz Be’eri is less than three miles from Gaza. Even when the rockets don’t actually land inside the kibbutz, we always see the Iron Dome interceptions overhead.

We are used to the booms.

Inside the safe room, we turn on the TV and realize: something way bigger is happening this time. The rocket sirens aren’t limited to the western Negev, to the towns and villages along the border with the Gaza Strip—this is much bigger. But still, no reason to panic. As soon as the sirens pause, I sneak out of the safe room to make Lianne and the girls some tea. Just like you’d expect of someone who grew up in England, Lianne raised our daughters to adore tea. They can’t start their morning without a cup of English breakfast tea. It’s tradition. I head back to the safe room with a pot of tea, and we drink it as we listen to the sirens outside (they’ve restarted) and watch the news on TV.

And then—we see it. The television shows footage of masked gunmen in a white Toyota pickup truck, driving around the city of Sderot. That’s less than ten miles away. My jaw drops. Something unprecedented is happening.

Our local emergency team starts updating us on WhatsApp. At first, they warn there’s a possibility that terrorists have infiltrated the kibbutz. Then it becomes a fact: there are terrorists in the kibbutz.

Right about then, the first images start coming out of an attack near Kibbutz Reim, just a few miles away. It’s being reported that a party that took place overnight, the Nova Festival, has quickly become a bloodbath as terrorists embarked on a shooting spree across an open field. We see scenes of utter chaos as terrified young men and women, covered in blood, run through wheat fields. I try to reassure Lianne and the girls. “Even if terrorists have infiltrated the kibbutz,” I tell them, “there can’t be more than two or three of them.”

More reports flood in, and my prediction begins to look absurd. It’s not just Reim, or Sderot, or Be’eri. There are also gunmen in Ofakim, on the way to Netivot, and in every kibbutz in the local area. Between us and the girls, we’re in multiple WhatsApp groups, and information pours in. The emergency team warns us on WhatsApp: They ran into terrorists. There are casualties.

If there are casualties, the situation’s not good.

Messages stream in. Ping. Ping. Ping. We’re glued to our phones, each update painting a bleaker, more chilling picture. The messages in our group chats—the kibbutz, local parents, the youth group, friends—are simply unthinkable. They shot my mom! writes one of Yahel’s classmates, a thirteen-year-old girl who lives just a few hundred yards away.

The truth comes to light: dozens of terrorists have infiltrated the kibbutz. They’re going door to door, storming into houses, breaking into safe rooms. Even stealing cars. The Israeli army is nowhere to be seen.

If they’re stealing cars, that means they can kidnap people into Gaza.

Gaza is right here, over the fence.

Where is the army to protect us?!

As Lianne texts her family in England, we communicate through silent glances. She holds up her phone to flash me the messages she’s reading. The terrorists just broke into this guy’s house. They forced their way into that woman’s home. We live on a kibbutz, a small communal village. Everyone knows everyone. I know where every house is, how many people live there, who they are.

I sneak out of the safe room, lock the front door, and close everything I can: shutters, doors, windows. We hear thuds, then a creaking sound. The terrorists are trying to break in through the shutters. I close the safe room door and hold the handle shut. Like almost every household safe room in Israel, you can’t lock the door from the inside. These rooms are designed to protect you from rocket attacks, not intruders. In any case, the terrorists fail to break into our house and move on, next door. I only let go of the safe room door when I’m certain they’ve gone. We hope that’s it, that they’ve skipped us. From the messages streaming in, we discover that the terrorists are chucking Molotov cocktails into our neighbors’ houses, setting them on fire as terrified families barricade inside. We decide that if the terrorists come back, we won’t resist or put up a fight. We hope that this will protect the girls and stop the terrorists from shooting.

It’s 10:45. At this time on a normal Shabbat morning, we’d be sitting down for a family meal. One week we might eat jachnun; other times, Lianne cooks shakshuka. But this isn’t one of those Saturdays. We’ve been stuck in the safe room for over four hours.

Crash. There goes the stairwell window. With a view of the surrounding fields, it’s the only window in the house without shutters. I hear one of the terrorists clambering through before heading to the front door and opening it for the others. The terrorists storm the house and very quickly reach the safe room.

The door opens. They haul us out. The living room is still full of balloons from Noiya’s and Yahel’s birthdays. They were both born in October, so we celebrated twice this week. The five terrorists who broke into the safe room are not alone. There are five others, plus a commander barking orders. These are skilled, careful operatives, who know what they’re doing. Two of the terrorists manhandle me. I know they plan to kidnap me, there’s no doubt in my mind. “British passport! British passport!” Lianne starts blurting in English, trying to signal that she and the girls are British citizens, with the documents to prove it upstairs. We’ve talked this through. We’re sure the terrorists wouldn’t dare mess around with His Majesty’s subjects. My wife and two daughters should be safe.

One of the terrorists signals for me to go upstairs and bring the passports. I start climbing the stairs. The broken windowpane sparkles in the sunlight. The commander catches a glimpse of me and orders his men to bring me back. They hold me in my living room, make the girls stand in the kitchen, and order Lianne, who’s still wearing shorts and a tank top, to get dressed.

Lianne goes to our room. I’m right by the doorway, held by the terrorists. I watch her, lingering by the closet, unsure what to wear or what to do next. “Lianne, don’t freak out,” I tell her. She stares at me. Her eyes say it all: What the hell do you mean, don’t freak out?

I think they’ll be fine, Lianne and the girls. I mean, they just told her to get dressed. And anyway, they have British passports. And after all, if the terrorists wanted to kill us, they’d have already riddled us with bullets in the safe room, finished the job in five seconds flat, and moved on to the next house.

The terrorists start dragging me out of the house. I’m barefoot. I can’t see the girls anymore, because they’re in the kitchen behind me and the terrorists are holding my head forward.

“I’ll come back!” I shout as the terrorists haul me outside.

I can’t hear them. I don’t know if they heard me.

They’re dragging me out through my front door. The terrorists have pinned me between them, my head forced down. When I manage to raise my head and steal a glance, I see my beautiful kibbutz reduced to carnage. Our neighbors’ homes are burning. The Or family’s house is in flames. So is the Levs’. And the Zohars’. These are our friends … Yonat Or and Or Lev were in my class at school.

The whole area is teeming with armed terrorists. They’re laughing, strutting around, even riding our neighbors’ bicycles. One of the terrorists holding me realizes I’ve looked up, flips out, and strikes me, sending my reading glasses, which were perched on my head, flying. The gunmen drag me toward the kibbutz’s perimeter fence, a few dozen feet from our home. We live in a relatively new neighborhood of the kibbutz, called Kerem. It’s in the northwestern part of the community—on the side that faces the Gaza Strip.

We pass the fence. The terrorists drag me north. As we walk, other passing terrorists take turns punching me. One of them kicks me in the ribs. The men holding me try to stop others from coming close. They want me alive, I think to myself. At one point, they grab a headband off a nearby terrorist to cover my eyes. I can just about see through it.

I’m being kidnapped. I understand this is a catastrophe. I understand what this means. I don’t mind that they’re beating me. I don’t even feel it. Because in these moments, as I’m being led past the kibbutz fence, under the blazing sun, engulfed by the smell of smoldering ruins, a headband strapped over my eyes, dragged by terrorists gripping both my hands, totally aware that I am being abducted into Gaza but knowing at least that Lianne and the girls were left behind, I focus and concentrate on one mission: surviving to return home.

There is no more regular Eli. From now on, I am Eli the survivor.

The fence at the northwestern edge of the kibbutz is wide open. Standing there is a man who looks like a taxi dispatcher, directing the traffic. Unlike the others, he hasn’t covered his face. He has a role. He is no mere terrorist; he’s an administrator. There is order here, a plan. Logic in this murderous madness.

I understand what’s happening. The terrorists are loading hostages into vehicles stolen from the kibbutz and are driving them into the Gaza Strip. We arrive at some sort of assembly point. Two terrorists shove me into a car. I recognize it; it’s from the kibbutz. They pin me down to the floor in the back and we drive. They don’t know I understand Arabic. I follow every word. I listen. They are euphoric. Stunned this is happening. Overjoyed they exceeded expectations. Astonished they conquered Be’eri with such ease. “Hada millian, hada millian!” they say to one another. They’re millionaires, these Jews!

They throw a blanket over me, on the floor of the car. I’m boiling. I’m sweating. The car takes us down long winding roads. I hear the terrorists getting stressed. They’re sure we’re going to get hit in an air strike any second. I’m sure of it, too. After a short drive, they stop and haul another hostage into the car—a Thai worker from a neighboring kibbutz. They dump him on top of me.

The car speeds west. I can’t see anything, but I hear the slow creaking of iron. We cross a gate, maybe a checkpoint. The terrorists stop for a second and speak to someone outside. The car continues driving and I know that it’s over.

They’re taking us inside.

Into Gaza.

‌2

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. They talk to me in Arabic and I answer in Arabic. The fact I know Arabic makes them stressed. They’re stressed, period.

“What’s your name?”

“Eli Sharabi.”

“Where are you from?”

“Kibbutz Be’eri.”

“Are you a soldier?”

“No, not a soldier.”

“Not a soldier?”

“No.”

They look at each other and then at me again.

“You’re a soldier,” their commander declares.

“I’m not a soldier,” I repeat.

“How old are you?”

“Wahad wa-hamseen sneen,” I tell him in Arabic. Fifty-one.

“Fifty-one?”

“Yes, fifty-one.”

“You’re a soldier!”

“No, I’m not a soldier. I swear I’m not a soldier,” I say.

“You’re younger!” they accuse.

“No, no,” I respond. “I swear, I’m fifty-one!”

I can see they don’t believe me. They don’t believe I’m not connected to the army, and they don’t believe my age. They think I’m younger, and my Arabic makes them suspicious. They interrogate the Thai worker too. He doesn’t understand what they want. He doesn’t speak Arabic, or Hebrew, or even any English. They hit him when he fails to answer, and he cries. I step in to help him. His name is Khun, and I try to reassure him, translate their questions, and explain what’s happening. I know I have to support him and keep him safe.

After a few minutes, they blindfold us again, this time tightly, and bind our hands behind our backs with tight zip ties. From this point on, they begin what seems like an attempt to confuse the enemy. They move us from place to place, from one group of captors to the next. From the mosque, they take us to a car, where a different cell is waiting to transport us to another building: maybe a house, maybe a store, maybe another mosque. Who knows. A few minutes later, they move us again: another car, another group, another ride to the next building. In total, they move us through four different locations. From the terrorists’ chatter, I understand it’s deliberate and coordinated. They’re switching teams, locations, and vehicles on purpose so the IDF can’t track them. After the last stop, we drive again, a short ride, until the car reverses down a small slope and brakes. They pull us out. I feel sand under my bare feet and think: Just not a tunnel, please, God, not a tunnel. Not the nightmare of being buried underground. Not being suffocated inside Hamas’s terrifying warren of tunnels, a bottomless underworld with no light, no air, and no return.

They drag us until we feel concrete beneath our feet, and we begin walking upstairs. With every step, I feel relief. All I want is to be aboveground, not below it. All I want is not to be thrown into a pit. We climb one flight of stairs, then another. Between the flights, I reckon we’ve entered an enclosed building. I can smell cooking and laundry. This must be a house. It feels reassuring to be inside. At the top of the second staircase, I feel a breeze, as if there are no walls around us. The terrorists lead us into a room and seat us on a bed. Someone brings us water. I take a few sips. They remove our zip ties, and I thank them, relieved to free my arms. The zip ties hurt terribly and I’m glad they’re off. But a minute later, the terrorists return with thick ropes and tie us up again, even tighter. They bind our hands behind our backs again, and this time also tie our legs. The ropes are so tight, they brand my flesh. The tension in my shoulders from having my arms pulled behind my back … it’s pure torture.

From now on, for three days, my entire body convulses with pain. All I can think about is my hands, shoulders, legs! And again: Hands. Shoulders. Legs. God almighty! Hands! Shoulders! Legs! We hadn’t traveled far from Be’eri to the Gaza Strip, or between stops, so I know I’m not too far. Not far from home, not far inside Gaza. In the first two hours after being kidnapped, as they move us around, before reaching this house, I’m consumed by fear, by pure survival. My body and mind haven’t processed what’s happening yet. But once it starts to sink in, and the adrenaline wears off, the pain—the real, physical pain—takes over. All I want, all I need, all I crave is to bring my arms forward. It’s killing me to have my shoulders stretched backward like this.

The terrorists who brought us here leave. An older man, who must be the father of the house, keeps watch over us. Through my blindfold, which keeps slipping a little, I make out a tall, broad, strong man with white hair. He brings us food once or twice a day, placing slices of pita in our mouths. I beg him in Arabic to loosen the ropes or at least tie my hands in front of me. He refuses.

“Go to sleep,” he keeps repeating.

“I can’t sleep like this,” I tell him. He still won’t budge.

My eyes begin to adjust to the room they’ve put us in. It’s an ordinary children’s bedroom. There’s a small bed, two mattresses on the floor for us, a dresser, and a desk with shelves. There are two large windows: one facing south, the other west. The windows are draped with burlap, branded with the letters: UNRWA. The fabric is secured to the windows but doesn’t block the light. I think about Lianne and the girls. About Yahel’s bedroom. The gunshots inside. The room we were all snatched from. I think about Noiya and Yahel’s birthday balloons. I keep closing my eyes and seeing Lianne standing frozen in front of the wardrobe, terrified, unsure what to do. Don’t freak out, I told her.

Don’tfreak out about what? About what?

In the late afternoon of the first day, after several hours of lying in silence, forsaken on the mattresses—Israel’s air strikes begin. I lie there, trying different positions to ease the pain in my shoulders. They hurt so much that I don’t even care about the rope burns or the deafening bombings. I am consumed by the pain in my shoulders. The air strikes have begun and don’t stop for a moment. That’s not surprising. It’s been clear since the morning that something unheard-of is going on. The IDF was nowhere to be seen. There was so much I didn’t know. But I did know that the mighty Israeli army would wake up eventually, and I knew that when it did, it would look just like this: air strikes.

Between the bombings, I hear the constant buzz of a drone. That sound never stops either. I quickly realize that the Israeli air strikes are not the only terrifying sound. So are their rockets. Hamas’s rockets. I can hear them being fired right next to us, and it dawns on me that the launchers must be nearby—maybe inside the houses, maybe in the yard. We hear the rockets as they are being fired. When the sound is faint, I know they’re short-range—those that fall back at home, in the communities along the Gaza border. But when the noise is loud, I know they’re long-range rockets—and I worry for everyone they’re headed toward. I know exactly what it feels like on the other side.

Whenever we need to pee, the father or one of his sons grabs us, takes us out of the room, leads us to the bathroom, and pulls our boxers down so we can relieve ourselves. It’s humiliating. You’re standing there, exposed, blindfolded, hands tied, legs bound, performing the most basic, private act after someone has stripped you down, knowing his gaze is fixed on you the whole time.

I can’t sleep that first night. Outside, the muezzin’s call curls through the air. There are unfamiliar sounds: dogs barking, muffled voices of the family downstairs, and air strikes near and far. For three days, I can barely fall asleep. Now and then I slip into something I can’t quite name: A fainting spell? A snooze? Maybe something else. It’s unbearably hot, and when I lie on my side, the blindfold slips over my nose and mouth and I feel like I’m suffocating. I call out to my captors in panic. The father comes up to adjust the blindfold; sometimes he sends someone who looks like a younger him. Next to me, Khun never stops crying, and I try to calm him down. I’m playacting for his sake. When he calms, I feel myself again.

My heart is pounding. My heart is aching with worry. With homesickness. With fear. And my body? My body is screaming: Help!

‒

After three days in captivity, two men enter our room. They remove our blindfolds and untie the ropes. I breathe a sigh of relief and feel my shoulders breathing with me. They are both armed with Kalashnikov rifles. They eye us up, and I eye them up back. They look young, around thirty. One is shorter, a bit stocky, calm. The other, with a prominent scar across his face, is taller and more sullen. The stocky one is called Sa’id; the sullen one is Sa’ad. Later, in the tunnels, we call Sa’id “the Mask,” and the sullen one “the Cleaner.” But for now, we’re not in the tunnels: we’re in a family home. The Cleaner and the Mask dress my wounds, from the tight ropes, and then chain both Khun and me with iron shackles on our legs. They leave our hands free. And no more blindfolds.

When they see me without a shirt, they ask about a big bruise on my arm. I don’t know what caused it. I guess it’s from my abduction, when the terrorists gripped me. I notice that the Mask and the Cleaner are uneasy. From what I overhear, then and later, I understand they’re afraid of Israeli military ingenuity. They think maybe the IDF planted a chip or some tracker in me to monitor them. Like the terrorists who interrogated me at the mosque, they are surprised by my Arabic and struggle to fathom I’m not from Shin Bet or Mossad.

Slowly, I start to study them. Bit by bit, I learn everything. With the keen senses of a man focused on survival, I smell, I watch, I feel. At first, the Cleaner, the Mask, the father, and the sons speak in short, terse, detached, suspicious sentences. As the days go by, they talk more, I listen more, they listen more, and I talk more.

And I learn. The Cleaner, for example, is the more religious and radical of the pair. He fasts every Monday and Thursday. He prays devoutly. His hand gestures are impatient, and he keeps repeating that there is no place for Jews in this land and that the hostages will only be freed if all the Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails are released. Some years ago, I learn, he was severely injured in an Israeli air strike, leaving him with a scar—and rage. The Mask, meanwhile, is more relaxed, with a bashful smile, and he likes sweet drinks. When the father goes out to the store, he asks him to bring back a Coke or Sprite. I learn that they have families, wives, children. They try to keep these personal details under wraps, but as time goes by, their tongues loosen. And I study them.

They leave their weapons outside our room. I hear them cleaning them at night. They tell me not to worry, not to be afraid—they’re protecting us. I study their routine, and I study ours, mine and Khun’s. The Cleaner and the Mask pray five times a day. They invite me to join them in prayer. I politely decline. On one occasion, they manage to persuade Khun, and he prostrates himself just like them, repeating what they say and murmuring along with them.

The Mask is a talker. He asks me so many questions. The same ones over and over again, like he’s trying to trip me up, to see if I’ll answer differently the second or third time. As if I’m a Mossad spy and it’s his job to expose me. I speak with him in a way that sounds free, but I’m not free at all. I’m always weighing every word, with both him and the others. I’m careful not to mention my military background in intelligence, or to allude to my work with major Israeli defense firms, or to bring up politics. I agree with him when I have to, nodding when he accuses the IDF of bombing hospitals or killing babies. That’s terrible, I say. War is terrible.

And the Mask really likes to talk. He gives me mini-lectures about how he sees the world. How they see the world. This land is theirs. All of it. I should go back to Morocco or Yemen, where my grandparents came from. This land isn’t mine. There will be no peace as long as we, the Jews, are on their land.

I begin learning about the family holding us in their home. At first, they hide their names and tell me to call everyone “Abu Ahmed.” But every day at 04:00, I wake from my light sleep and hear the father waking his sons for prayer, calling them by name. Sometimes their friends come into the yard and shout their names from outside. That’s how I learn that the boys are called Ahmed, the eldest; Mosab, the middle son; and Yusuf, the youngest.

Ahmed is number two in the household. He’s eager to prove he’s a real man, that he’s capable, that he’s strong. Whenever there’s a nearby air strike and we hear a building collapsing, he runs out to help and assist in the rescue. Mosab, the middle one, keeps a greater distance. I struggle to work out much about him. Yusuf, the youngest, is the closest. The first time Yusuf speaks to me, when he comes upstairs with food, he asks me, “How old do I look to you?”

I look at him for a moment. “Fifteen or sixteen?” He’s big and well-built, but his face betrays his youth. Yusuf smiles but doesn’t reveal his age.

I learn about the father. He’s a strong man, wise and religious. He calls the shots in this house. Indoors he wears a traditional jalabiya