‘I chose life’ – Sharabi’s story of survival grips JNF event
“My name is Eli Sharabi. I’ve come back from hell.”
With those words, Eli Sharabi, who survived 491 days in Hamas captivity, addressed an extraordinary sold-out JNF Annual Event in Sydney on Tuesday evening, where he shared his story in conversation with leading Israeli journalist and commentator, Nadav Eyal.
“A moment before that, I was brought out from my house. I just shouted to my daughters, ‘I’ll come back,'” he recounted the nightmare of October 7. “They dragged me out from the house, and I saw my friend’s house burning … and I understood they actually occupied all this territory in the kibbutz.”
“They pushed me into the car, and immediately I started to say, ‘Shema Yisrael.’ I don’t know why; I’m not a religious man, but I understood I need to be in my survival mode now.”
Eli Sharabi at the JNF event in Sydney (Rob Klein)
Sharabi, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri, was kidnapped into Gaza together with around 240 other residents of southern Israel. His wife Lian and daughters Noya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were among the 1,200 Israelis murdered that day. His brother Yossi was also abducted and later killed in Gaza.
His arrival in Gaza was brutal. “The minute they pulled me out from the car (in Gaza), among civilians … men and children with bare hands and shoes, they started to lynch me,” he recalled. “Fortunately, the two guys from Hamas succeeded to take me away.”
For 52 days he was chained inside a family home together with Khun, a Thai worker. After that came the tunnels, 440 days, 40-50 metres underground. “They opened this door in the ground, and we saw a ladder. And they asked us to climb down, and we refused, because it looked like that perfect grave for me, like my worst nightmare.”
“Then I remembered my promise to my daughters that I’ll come back to them. So, I choose life again and start to climb down into the darkness.”
In the tunnels he was soon joined by six other hostages, and life below was suffocating. They were always chained, sometimes to each other, even when going to the toilet.
“Believe me, every minute, every hour, it looks like forever,” he said. “We understood that we need to have a routine; otherwise, you get insane. So, we said we need to sleep at night, wake up in the morning, do certain things … prayers in the morning, and after that we tried to train physically.”
Starvation became constant. “One meal a day – a bowl of rice or pasta or as little as one pita bread for 24 hours,” he said. “Sometimes the meals didn’t arrive at the same time every day, and you never knew if food was coming. We could go more than 24 hours without eating.”
“On October 7 I was more than 70 kilos. The day I was released … I was 44 kilos. You dream about food, you talk about food, you cry about food, you’re begging for food.”
Even so, Sharabi created rituals of hope with the other hostages. “Every Friday … I said kiddush on water because we didn’t have wine, and we tried to keep a quarter of pita bread. And all these things gave us a lot of strength and faith.”
He also introduced a nightly ceremony. “Each one of us has to mention something good that happened that day, even in this hell,” he said. “In the beginning, they look at me like a crazy man, but after a few days, each one of them finds more than three or four good things that happened.”
He quoted Viktor Frankl’s philosophy of survival. “Every day we say the sentence; we remind ourselves what we are surviving for. If you have why, you can find a how.”
There were rare moments of hope, like when they overheard their captors discussing the news and they heard about rallies. “It was an amazing moment to understand that the Israeli citizens … protesting for us and fighting for us. For us, it was more than ten meals a day. It gave us air in our lungs.”
When Hamas guards told him they had seen his wife and daughters at demonstrations, he clung to it. “That was an amazing moment for me. I don’t know if they lied or not, but I’m happy they didn’t tell me about their murder, because my promise to come back kept me alive.”
Nadav Eyal interviewing Eli Sharabi (Rob Klein)
On the day of his release, Sharabi was forced to endure what he called “this horrible ceremony that Hamas did in Deir al‑Balah … three hours of rehearsals on questions and answers they wrote.”
On 8 February this year, Sharabi was freed in a hostage deal. Hamas told him of his brother Yossi’s death. Only when he reached the IDF base in Re’im did he learn that Lian, Noya and Yahel were also gone.
Since his release, he has travelled abroad and met Jewish communities in the United States, the UK and Mexico. “I’ve seen how much they’re doing to show solidarity … and it really warmed my heart,” he said, thanking diaspora Jews for their support.
“I don’t have the privilege to cry all day about my loss,” he told the Sydney audience. “I remember Lian, Noya and Yahel every day until my last day, but it can be alongside of my life, not instead of my life. I’m sure I’m going to rebuild my life.”
Sharabi ended with a message of unity. “You don’t miss your car, you don’t miss your bank account, you miss your family, you miss your friends, and you miss your freedom. It doesn’t really matter if we are religious or unreligious, if we are Sephardi or Ashkenazi, or men or women … it’s really, really important we stay together. It’s the only way we can defeat our enemies.”
He concluded with words that drew a standing ovation: “I am a survivor. Bring them all home now.”
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For pre-sales of Eli Sharabi’s memoir “Hostage” – see: https://jnf.org.au/nsw-eli/
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