“We Were Humiliated Daily”: Freed Hostage Eli Sharabi Reveals Anguish of 491-Day Hamas Captivity.
Eli Sharabi, an Israeli man held captive by Hamas for 491 days, has broken his silence. His testimony offers a harrowing, firsthand account of the brutality faced by hostages, marked by daily humiliation, a descent into underground tunnels, and a devastating personal betrayal.
Sharabi’s nightmare began on the morning of October 7, 2023, when rocket alarms sent his family scrambling into the safe room of their home. What was meant to be a sanctuary, however, became a trap.
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“We were in the safe room, hoping it would pass,” Sharabi recounted in an emotional interview with Sky News’ The World With Yalda Hakim. But Hamas militants stormed the house, shooting into the safe room and demanding they open the door.
In a moment of desperate negotiation, Sharabi insisted on a guarantee for the safety of his wife and two daughters before he would comply. The militants agreed. It was a promise they would shatter moments later.
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After opening the door, Sharabi was forcibly taken. His journey into captivity was immediately violent. He described being taken deeper into Gaza, where a mob of civilians surrounded him, and he narrowly survived a lynching attempt.
His initial imprisonment was in a Palestinian family’s home, where he was first bound with ropes and later secured with an iron chain. But after 52 days, his conditions grew even more dire.
“They took me to the tunnels,” he stated. He described plunging roughly 50 meters underground into a network beneath a mosque. Life in the tunnels was a relentless cycle of deprivation and abuse. Access to running water was nonexistent; he was allowed a shower only once every six weeks, using buckets of cold water. He spoke of severe, constant hunger and the psychological torment of being humiliated and physically abused on a daily basis.
After 491 days in captivity, Eli Sharabi was finally released. But the joy of freedom was instantly extinguished by a grief that will last a lifetime. He was met with the catastrophic news that his wife and two daughters, the very family he had tried to protect with that futile negotiation at the safe room door, had been killed shortly after he was taken from them.
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His testimony stands not only as a record of the physical suffering endured in captivity but as a haunting reminder of the human cost of conflict and the profound, lasting trauma inflicted on those who survive. The broken promise at the safe room door cost Eli Sharabi everything.
“We Were Humiliated Daily”: Freed Hostage Eli Sharabi Reveals Anguish of 491-Day Hamas Captivity.
