Former captive Eli Sharabi spoke Thursday evening with honesty and humor about his experiences in captivity and what life has been like since his release from Hamas captivity in February 2025, as he was interviewed by journalist Roni Kuban about his bestselling book “Hostage” during the final event of the International Writers Festival in Jerusalem.

Sharabi was abducted October 7, 2023, from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri during the devastating Hamas terrorist attack.

He returned home to Israel to find out that his wife, Lianne, and two daughters, Noya and Yahel, were murdered on October 7, and that his brother, Yossi, was taken hostage from his Kibbutz Be’eri home and killed in captivity.

“It’s like a five-kilo hammer on the head,” said Sharabi, referring to the moment when his mother and sister told him about his wife and daughters.

They whispered the news to him when they all first reunited, with Sharabi recalling that he thanked his sister for burying his family in her hometown and not at Be’eri.

While in captivity, Sharabi said he had thought about all the various possibilities of what happened to his family.

“I’m a very practical person; it sat in my head all the time,” said Sharabi, who was told by his captors more than once that his wife and daughters were alive and fighting for his release. “I told the others that it wasn’t necessarily them, because all Sharabis look exactly alike. But I prepared myself while surviving captivity.”

For the first 40 days of captivity, Sharabi assumed his wife and daughters’ British passports would have saved them. Hower, when he met fellow hostages Hersh Goldberg-Polin and Ori Danino, he heard from them that there had been a massacre at Be’eri, with women and children taken captive as........

© The Times of Israel