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# “I am Eli the survivor.” Eli Sharabi’s Hostage
- URL: https://otherwise.ghost.io/i-am-eli-the-survivor-eli-sharabis/
- Published: 2025-10-07T11:46:39.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-17T13:43:22.000Z
- Author: Khaled Salih
- Tags: Newsletter, #Migrated-1792244264359, #Import 2026-10-17 14:38

*By Khaled Salih*

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/d6/2c/d62cdd13-a476-41c5-8f2c-29270c99d95d/content/images/2026/10/f711e22b-53ad-4268-b9cd-6df5e984f7e9_883x1383-heic.jpg)

Eli Sharabi’s *Hostage* is not merely a chronicle of captivity; it is a profound and harrowing cartography of the human spirit under absolute duress. Sharabi charts the unforgiving terrain of loss, terror, and dehumanisation, but also maps the intricate psychological structures he built to withstand the unthinkable. Let me share with you my analyse the core pillars of Eli Sharabi’s survival, the staggering depth of his loss, and the remarkable transition from a captive fighting for his own life to a witness fighting for the memory of others. To read Hostage is to attend a masterclass in endurance and to bear witness to a devastating testament to the price of freedom.

Before the tunnels, the starvation, and the 491 days of psychological warfare, there was the foundational trauma of October 7, 2023\. Sharabi’s account of that morning is not just a prologue but the violent severing of one world from the next. It establishes the impossible stakes, introduces the central figures of his love and loss, and defines the starting point of his singular mission: to survive.

The morning begins not with screams but with the mundane rituals of family life. As rocket alerts blare, Sharabi’s first instinct is to comfort his daughters and make tea for his wife, Lianne. This jarring contrast between domestic tranquility and the encroaching horror makes the subsequent breach of their safe room all the more grotesque. The terrorists arrive not as a faceless force, but as an intimate violation of their most sacred space, the sound of their gunshots “deafening” in the enclosed room. Sharabi looks at his daughters, Noiya, sixteen, and Yahel, thirteen, and sees them “frozen in terror.” He writes, “I will never forget that look of terror in their eyes.” This memory, seared into his consciousness, becomes more than a source of pain; it is a recurring, motivating force, a fixed point of love in a universe that has lost all its bearings.

The moment of Sharabi’s abduction marks an instantaneous and deliberate psychological transformation. As he is dragged barefoot from his home, he makes a declaration of profound will. “There is no more regular Eli,” he tells himself. “From now on, I am Eli the survivor.” Here, Sharabi grapples with a fundamental paradox of survival: to live, the man he was must die. This is not a passive hope but an active self-redefinition. In that instant, he sheds the identity of a husband, father, and kibbutz manager to adopt the only one that matters. This conscious act of renaming himself is the first and most critical tool in his arsenal for endurance: a cognitive shield against the dehumanisation that is to come.

Sharabi’s declaration, “From now on, I am Eli the survivor,” is later deepened by a moral refrain that threads through the entire memoir: “There is always a choice.” This becomes his existential credo. Even in a world stripped of agency, Sharabi insists that choice still exists, not in the outer world, but in the interior domain of will and dignity. To choose life, to endure humiliation without surrendering one’s self-concept, becomes an act of radical freedom. When faced with the command to descend into the tunnels, an abyss both literal and symbolic, he repeats to himself, “There. Is. Always. A. Choice.” That assertion transforms survival from instinct into moral defiance.

Sharabi’s forced march through Kibbutz Be’eri is a tour through the wreckage of his own life. The sensory horror is absolute: he sees his friends’ and neighbour’s’ homes burning, smells the “smoldering ruins,” and witnesses the “carnage” of his “beautiful kibbutz.” This scene cements the terrible understanding that his personal trauma is part of a much larger, communal catastrophe. The external destruction, the burning homes, the laughing terrorists riding bicycles, the sense of a world turned inside out, is a perfect mirror for the internal devastation that is just beginning to unfold within him. The home he knew is gone, and the self he knew has vanished with it.

Sharabi’s first days in Gaza mark the beginning of a systematic campaign to annihilate dignity. He recounts being ordered to strip naked and shave every hair from his body before being filmed for a “proof of life” video. The act, conducted under the camera’s unblinking eye, is not merely procedural, it is ritualised degradation. Sharabi describes himself as “peeling” his own skin in front of his captors, emptied of privacy, watched by three men who look upon his vulnerability as conquest. This moment establishes the psychic baseline of his captivity: total exposure, the forced surrender of control over his body and image. It is from this zero-point of dehumanisation that he begins to rebuild his moral and psychological structure.

Eli Sharabi’s survival over 491 days was not a passive act of waiting but an active, intellectually rigorous, and emotionally complex strategy. He did not simply endure his captivity; he managed it. The tunnel becomes a microcosm of society, where scarcity strips away civility and psychological warfare is constant. To withstand this relentless process of dehumanisation, Sharabi deployed a series of sophisticated mechanisms, building an internal fortress brick by meticulous brick.

At the core of Sharabi’s resilience is a profound sense of purpose. He finds this principle articulated by a fellow hostage, the young Hersh Goldberg-Polin, whose words resonate with a truth Sharabi is already living: “He who has a why can bear any how.” Sharabi’s primary “why” was his absolute conviction that his wife Lianne and daughters Noiya and Yahel were alive and waiting for him. Yet his memoir reveals a more complex psychology at play. While clinging to this belief for himself, he simultaneously manufactures hope for others, telling fellow hostages Or and Elia that their partners likely survived the massacre. This dual-track strategy, nurturing hope in others while privately preparing for the worst for himself, having “played out every possible scenario in my mind. Including the worst”, is a profound insight into the intellectual labour of endurance.

Sharabi remarkably repurposed his professional skills as a kibbutz manager to navigate the brutal social dynamics of captivity. His experience became a vital survival tool. Where the draft says he managed “interpersonal conflicts,” the source reveals a far grimmer reality of factions and “clans of disdain” erupting over scarce resources. In the tunnels, where starvation set in, arguments over a single piece of pita or a shared tube of toothpaste threatened to tear their fragile group apart. Sharabi became “the treasurer,” taking it upon himself to ensure the fair allocation of food and supplies. This was not just about fairness; it was a conscious act of management to prevent the group from cannibalising itself, using logic to de-escalate tensions that were as dangerous as their captors.

Sharabi’s later interactions with the younger hostages, Almog Sarusi, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Or, and Elia, open a new emotional register in the memoir. Their presence turns the tunnels into a miniature moral laboratory. Each man embodies a different form of endurance: Hersh’s philosophical calm, Almog’s youthful disbelief, Or’s anxious humour. Through them, Sharabi finds companionship that transcends fear. When Hersh tells him, “He who has a why can bear any how,” the line crystallises what Sharabi has already lived: survival not as passive waiting, but as meaning-making. Their fragile brotherhood, formed in darkness, becomes a counter-community. proof that solidarity, however improvised, can resist even engineered despair.

In an environment designed to strip away the humanity of the captives, Sharabi resisted by shouldering responsibility for others. He adopted a paternalistic role, first for the terrified Thai worker Khun, and later for the young, sensitive hostage Alon. He became their protector and source of strength, finding his own purpose in ensuring their survival. This instinct to find the “human dynamic” was a calculated survival tactic, not an emotional lapse. He makes it clear this is not Stockholm Syndrome; it is a strategy to manage his captors and, in doing so, regain a measure of control in a powerless situation.

Sharabi and his fellow hostages clung to small but powerful acts that preserved their sense of self and agency. These rituals formed a resilient framework against the psychological warfare of captors who constantly told them they had been forgotten.

The filth of the tunnels, the overflowing cesspit, the worms on their toothbrushes, was a constant assault on their humanity. Against this, they erected a sanctuary of tradition. Elia recited morning prayers, Sharabi sang “Eshet Chayil” for the women in his life, and they shared Kiddush with a cup of water on Friday nights. These acts were not just prayers; they were a defiant reclamation of dignity in the face of squalor, lifelines to a world beyond the tunnel.

In one memorable incident, the hostages find and secretly share a bottle of Fanta. Sharabi frames this as a “tiny, orange, sweet victory.” To analyse this merely as a victory is to miss its depth. In an environment designed to extinguish pleasure, this was a reclamation of sweetness, a taste of a world where simple joys existed. It stands in stark, tragic contrast to the later arguments over a single piece of mouldy pita, revealing how scarcity can reduce the assertion of will to the most basic human needs.

Perhaps their most powerful psychological tool was a daily ritual of finding “something good that happened.” This was not a simple positive-thinking exercise but a weapon against despair. The conscious act of seeking positivity, a kind word, a day without humiliation, was a disciplined strategy to actively manufacture hope when the world provided none.

Sharabi’s survival was predicated on a masterclass in psychological observation. He methodically created detailed profiles of each captor, giving them nicknames, “the Mask,” “the Cleaner,” “the Triangle,” “Trash,” that captured their essence. This was the manager’s mind at work, studying the human components of his cage. He details the stark difference between them: the relative kindness of “the Mask,” who loved sweet drinks, versus the reflexive brutality of “Trash,” who beat him for another captor’s bad news. Sharabi illuminates the paradox of their behaviour: men who could speak gently to their own children on the phone and then starve their hostages; who could cry during prayers before being sent into battle. By leveraging these individual psychologies, Sharabi could “read the room,” make requests, and navigate the treacherous landscape of their moods: a calculated strategy of survival, not sympathy.

One of the most fascinating dimensions of Hostage is Sharabi’s precise taxonomy of his captors. He categorises them with nicknames, the Mask, the Cleaner, the Triangle, Trash, Eyebrow, the Doctor, each a psychological sketch born of relentless observation. By naming them, he transforms faceless tormentors into analysable personalities, regaining a sliver of control over the chaos. This cataloguing impulse mirrors his professional discipline as a kibbutz manager; he manages his own imprisonment as if auditing the machinery of evil. These portraits are not offered for pity or humanisation, but as a method of mental survival: to make sense of the men who hold his fate.

While Eli Sharabi fought for a future with his family, the narrative of Hostage simultaneously builds a heart-wrenching account of all that was being irrevocably lost. His journey is shadowed by a grief that accumulates slowly and cruelly, cataloguing a devastating scale of personal and communal bereavement that culminates in a moment of ultimate paradox.

Sharabi’s first tastes of loss come with news of his fellow hostages. But the blow is made infinitely more cruel by the preceding context. For over a year, Sharabi was certain that the young men from the Nova Festival, Almog Sarusi, Ori Danino, and Hersh Goldberg-Polin, had been released ahead of him. He writes that he “even envied them for getting out.” This dramatic irony makes the eventual discovery of their murders in captivity a gut-wrenching shock. The news, relayed by his friend Ohad Ben Ami, is not just a report of death; it is the violent collapse of a year-long structure of hope, underscoring the specific, shared trauma of a brotherhood forged in darkness.

The truth of his own family’s fate is revealed with methodical cruelty. The first piece is delivered by a Hamas commander, who claims Sharabi’s brother, Yossi, was killed in an IDF airstrike. Sharabi clings to disbelief until his friend Ohad, upon their reunion in the final tunnel, confirms the news, recounting the official IDF spokesman’s statement he saw on television. With this confirmation, the first major pillar of Sharabi’s family unit crumbles, leaving him with the sickening realization that a part of his world has been permanently erased.

The ultimate, crushing blow is delivered not with a shout but with a whisper. Upon his release, as he stands on Israeli soil, a female IDF officer greets him. Her words are chosen with surgical precision: “Your mother and Osnat will tell you.”

In that single, carefully constructed phrase, Sharabi’s world ends. The absence of Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel from her sentence is a silence that screams. His hope, the “why” that sustained him, is extinguished in an instant. His reaction is one of devastating clarity: “No one needs to tell me anything. I understand everything.” Here lies the ultimate paradox of his freedom: the moment of his physical salvation is also the moment of his complete spiritual devastation. He has won the fight for his life only to learn he has lost everything he was fighting for.

Before this moment of shattering revelation, Sharabi’s journey to freedom passes through a brief, almost surreal interlude: the Red Cross convoy. After 491 days underground, he rides in an armoured vehicle toward Israel. A Red Cross worker named Felicity reassures him, “You are safe now.” For Sharabi, this is the first time the word safe regains meaning, and he breaks down in tears. Beside him, fellow hostage Ohad Ben Ami turns to Felicity and asks, “Where were you? For a year and four months, where were you?” Her quiet reply, “They didn’t let us reach you,” encapsulates the abyss between global institutions and lived human suffering. It is a moment of collective indictment: a cry from the ruins addressed to the world’s conscience.

The final part of Eli Sharabi’s book is not an epilogue but a new beginning forged in the crucible of grief. It is here that he transforms his mission of personal survival into a public mission of testimony, taking his first steps back into a world remade by tragedy and ensuring that the story does not end with his release.

Sharabi’s first actions as a free man are defined by a profound sense of duty, both to the dead and to the living.

His immediate need is to visit the graves of his wife and daughters. This is not an act of surrender but a necessary confrontation with the absolute nadir of his pain. Standing before their headstones, he finds a new starting point, a foundation from which to rebuild. “This here is rock bottom,” he declares. “I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it. Now, life.” It is a moment of profound acceptance and an assertion of his will to move forward.

The memoir closes with one of the most haunting images in modern literature: Sharabi’s visit to the graves of his wife and daughters. Accompanied by his sister Osnat, he kneels before the headstones, weeping until “everything fades away” except their names — Lianne, Noiya, Yahel. Then, after a long silence, he rises and says, “This here is rock bottom. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it. Now, life.” That final sentence is not triumph but resurrection: a deliberate turn from abyss to agency. It completes the arc that began with “I am Eli the survivor.” The man who once chose survival in a tunnel now chooses life in mourning: a second act of creation born from ashes.

Almost immediately after, he fulfils the promise he made in the tunnel by calling the parents of Alon. He speaks to them at length, telling them of their son’s strength. This call is a seamless continuation of the responsibility he shouldered in captivity: a profound act of love and a signal that his fight is not over.

The existence of Hostage itself becomes Sharabi’s new purpose. The acknowledgments and author bio make it clear that his survival was not an end but a means. He endured to live, and now he lives to ensure that the world does not forget. His advocacy, speaking to world leaders, addressing the United Nations, and meticulously documenting his ordeal in this book, is the logical extension of his fight in the tunnels. He has become a global witness, a voice for those he lost and for those still held captive.

Hostage is a document of immense power and importance. It is, without question, a harrowing and meticulously detailed account of unimaginable suffering. Yet its ultimate power lies not in its depiction of horror, but in its profound exploration of human resilience. This is the story of a man who, having been stripped of everything, his home, his family, his freedom, his very identity, methodically rebuilt a reason to live from the inside out. Eli Sharabi lost everything, but in his grief, he chose to find a new purpose: to use his voice to honor the memory of his beloved Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel, and to fight for those who have not yet come home. Hostage is an essential, unforgettable document of our time: a testament to love, a study in survival, and a profound act of hope against all odds.

Sharabi’s *Hostage*, a one word title, stands beside the great literature of survival, Primo Levi, Imre Kertész, and Wiesel, not only as witness, but as a philosophical inquiry into the boundaries of human will. It forces the reader and the word to realise that endurance is not merely to live through horror, but to insist that meaning, even in its smallest form, cannot be destroyed.

Eli Sharabi, 2025, *Hostage* (Kindle edition). Harper Influence, October 7, 2025\. Kindle edition. ISBN-13: 978-0063489783.