Having recently read Hostage Eli Sharabi’s phenomenally best–selling memoir, my mind turned to another work -- Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search For Meaning--- in which Frankl quotes several philosophers’ opinions on life’s purpose. Nietzsche’s suggestion “He who has a Why to live for can bear almost any How” eerily applicable to Sharabi’s book. In other words, the will to survive requires a reason. Survival is the theme in Hostage, Israel’s fastest selling book on record. Author Eli Sharabi chronicles, in harrowing detail, the 491 days he endured in Hamas’ captivity, initially in pro-Hamas Palestinian homes and subsequently in the claustrophobic, sub-terranean maze of tunnels worming the deep underbelly of Gaza.

 

We all have general knowledge of the unspeakable horrors suffered by innocent Israeli and foreign citizens on October 07, 2023. In Eli’s case, at 10:45 am., he was dragged out of the ‘saferoom’ of his modest home in Kibbutz Be’eri by gun-bearing Hamas terrorists, as his terrified English wife, Lianne and daughters Noiya and Yahel watched. They had been awakened at 6:29 am by a blaring alert app warning on Lianne’s phone, and had subsequently witnessed on TV, unbelievingly, the terrorists’ rout of the Nova Festival and their unchallenged marauding of Be’eri’s neighboring Kibbutzim. Where is the IDF? A question that appallingly went unanswered.

 

Eli quickly realizes he was to be a hostage, following ‘just’ a rib-kicking by a masked gunman. He focuses immediately “on one mission: surviving to return home” to his family. This proved to be Eli’s “why” – the “how” is his remarkable, intimately written, personal story. Lianne and his children, however, were brutally murdered right after his abduction, which only became known on his release. Otherwise, Hostage would never have seen ink and a “must read book” denied to the world. But Eli’s “why” took an additional turn.

 

Blindfolded, limbs brutally and tightly bound, Eli, along with a terrified Thai immigrant worker, named Khun, are bundled into a car and, by a circuitous route rushed to Gaza, into a Mosque. The terrorists are euphoric, even surprised, over their success. Arabic speaking Eli understands every word. Outside, Eli hears a cursing, screaming mob that attempts to rip him apart limb from limb. Next, they are taken to a Palestinian home where the terrorists give terse orders to the family. Eli knows what’s planned –the dreaded tunnels. Khan, however, is frantic. He understands nothing. Eli reassures him and finds his second “why” for survival--- caring for the culturally different, confused Khun.

 

Through a trapdoor in the floor of a Mosque, Eli describes in chilling detail how he and Khun are forced to descend hundreds of feet into the tunnel warrens. They join captives Hersch Goldberg, Eliya Cohen and Alon Ohel among others. They undergo humiliating indignities, endure grim sanitary conditions and are starved to the point of exhaustion. Sharabi informs the grotesquely inhumane conditions prevailed throughout their agonizing days of captivity. Eli’s comrade’s despair but he reminds each of them awaiting families need them--- their reason to survive.

 

Eventually released and learning of his family’s deaths, Eli’s writing of his “whys” in Hostage will resound indefinitely in Jewish literary annals.