Meeting Eli Sharabi
By: Larry Gordon
We’ve all read and heard the stories. But until you meet a hostage and hear their story up close, as we did the other night with former hostage Eli Sharabi, you cannot fathom the horrors these people have endured.
Sharabi was a 52-year-old resident of Kibbutz Be’eri with a wife and two teenage daughters on the morning of October 7, 2023 when 10 Hamas terrorists infiltrated their home during their surprise attack on Israel. In a dialogue with the talented Rabbi Moshe Scheiner at the Palm Beach Synagogue, Sharabi seemed to cover it all. That is, from the moment he was kidnapped, to when he learned that his wife, children, and brother were murdered, to the circumstances of his captivity underground for more than 440 days, and finally, the circumstances surrounding his release.
There were times during that period when he says he was treated better, and times when he was treated worse by his captors. Until that fateful day, he had lived in the community of Be’eri for 35 years. At the time the disaster struck, he and his wife believed that his wife and daughters’ British passports (his wife was from Britain) would save their lives. He later learned that they were murdered five minutes after the terrorists took him away to Gaza.
Sharabi is the author of the best-selling book “Hostage” published by Harper Collins. He has since traveled the world and has enjoyed the support of worldwide Jewish communities who have rallied behind him and other hostages and their families. Perhaps most interestingly, Sharabi has come to realize that although the people of Southern Israel believed they were one with the Palestinians in Gaza, he has now come to the conclusion that not one of those Arabs—civilian or terrorist—would forego the chance to murder a Jew.
Mostly, he talked with Rabbi Moshe Scheiner about his ordeal belowground in Gaza over all those days of captivity. He says at the beginning, his captors fed their prisoners two meager meals a day, but that was later cut to a fraction of that amount. Most recall the cryptic horror-show put on by Hamas around Sharabi’s release with two other captives, where he looked gaunt and weak and Sharabi confirmed that at the time, he was down to 97 pounds.
Like so many other residents of the so-called Gaza envelope, for the most part their religion was “peace.” Many will tell you that their Jewish identity was secondary. For many, including Sharabi, their long-time dream was to live in peace as one people with their Arab neighbors. Unbeknownst to the Jews of southern Israel, their Arab neighbors had a very different idea. Their dream was wholesale slaughter.
While Sharabi said he was really never attached to religion, once he was held prisoner in Gaza, he explains that he found himself reciting “Shema Yisrael” every day. He says that for a while, he was with other hostages who also had a minimal attachment to religion, but still the small group developed a routine whereby they recited Kiddush on a cup of water each Friday night and saved up pieces of pita that was their meal during the week so they could recite the berachah of “Homotzi” over the bread.
His book is captivating and most of his audience commented that once they started reading it, they could not put it down.
Eli says that he often visits the graves of his wife and daughters as well as his brother Yossi. He says that he apologizes to them for not doing a better job of protecting them from the monstrous enemy.
He has not been back to his home in Be’eri since October 7, 2023, but he’s working with his therapist and hopes to be able to go back to visit someday. Eli says that he has two choices: one is to break down and choose not to go on living, the other is to choose life. He says that despite all the hardships he has endured, he has chosen to live.
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