Gaza Survivor's Nightmare Memoir: "They Ate Like Kings While We Starved!"

Two years after the blood-soaked dawn that shattered his world, Eli Sharabi stares into the abyss of unfinished grief, his heart chained not to Gaza's filthy tunnels but to the 48 souls still trapped there by Hamas. The 53-year-old former hostage, freed in February after 16 agonizing months, has poured his unimaginable ordeal into "Hostage," a raw memoir hitting English shelves on Tuesday—the first from a survivor of the October 7, 2023, inferno. But amid Israel's thunderous regional strikes and a fragile US-brokered peace plan flickering with hope, Sharabi's words aren't just a personal exorcism; they're a desperate lifeline tossed to Alon Ohel, the young pianist he calls his "adopted son," and the remains of his slain brother Yossi.

Sharabi's captivity was a descent into hell's underbelly: leg irons in rat-infested labyrinths, beatings that cracked ribs, and a gnawing hunger that stripped him to 97 pounds—a skeletal echo of the vibrant father from Kibbutz Be'eri. "The starvation... you can't fathom it," he told the Associated Press, voice cracking like the moldy pita that became his lifeline. As Gaza's skies darkened with Israeli fire and its streets crumbled into famine—claiming over 67,000 lives, displacing 90% of 2 million residents—hostages dwindled from two meager meals to one, while captors gorged on pilfered aid crates. "They feasted like kings on what was meant for the starving," Sharabi seethes, his words a indictment of the asymmetry that turned humanitarians into hyenas.

The October 7 massacre, which claimed 1,200 lives and snatched 251 into the shadows, left Be'eri as ground zero of horror: 106 dead, 30 abducted, homes gutted by flames and friendly fire in the frenzy. Sharabi's final glimpse of his wife and two teenage daughters was etched in terror as militants hauled him away. Freedom brought the gut-wrenching truth—they'd been slaughtered in their living room. "No closure until everyone's home," he vows, his one pilgrimage back to the kibbutz halting at the threshold of bullet-riddled walls and bloodied floors. Therapy demands he cross that portal, but the wound festers raw.

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In those early weeks, isolation amplified the torment: bunkered in a dingy apartment with a Thai farmhand, their languages a barrier thicker than concrete. Post-ceasefire collapse, the tunnels swallowed him whole, pairing him with three festival-goers half his age. Age forged him into a patriarch; chains couldn't bind his spirit. He devised calisthenics to defy atrophy, instituted "gratitude rounds" to harvest joy from crumbs—a kinder guard, an extra scrap of bread. Faith, once dormant, bloomed in whispers: Friday blessings over water pretending to be wine, tears salting prayers in the gloom. "Every breath could be your last, so we chased slivers of light," Sharabi reflects. "Survival? It's stitched from tiny triumphs."

Yet no victory tastes as bitter as abandoning Alon. In January's release lottery, the 24-year-old—sensitive keys of a Steinway his only prior chains—crumbled in panic, realizing he'd stay. "The happiest news twisted into nightmare because of him," Sharabi recounts, the memory a fresh bruise. Ohel's recent video plea, hollow-cheeked and haunted, haunts Sharabi's dreams. Post-freedom, he's a one-man crusade: lobbying Trump, railing at the UN, his memoir a megaphone blasting into bunkers. "Leaders, end this madness—bring them back," he implores hawkish hawks and wavering watchers alike.

As Tuesday's anniversary tolls like a dirge, with 20 hostages clinging to life amid the rubble, Sharabi's prose tunnels under the headlines, forcing readers to feel the damp rot, hear the rats' skitter, taste the despair. It's no victory lap; it's a vigil, a vow. To Ohel, he whispers across the miles: "We're roaring like lions for you. Hold on—you're stronger than this abyss. One day, we'll honor every pact, every prayer." In a war that devours anniversaries, Sharabi's story isn't survival—it's a summons to save the survivors.

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