Two years ago today, five terrorists broke into Eli Sharabi’s safe room in Kibbutz Be’eri. He had been sheltered there for hours with his wife, Lianne, and teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel, reading horrific texts flooding in from neighbors and hoping somehow his family would be spared.

They were not. The terrorists shot and killed their dog, then dragged Eli away, leaving his family behind. As they pulled him out the door, he looked back and shouted: “I’ll come back!”

After 491 days in Hamas captivity, Eli did come back. He survived—with most of his time buried deep underground, shackled, starved, subjected to constant humiliation, and psychological and physical torture—all because he believed he would one day be reunited with his wife and daughters. That belief kept him alive.

But when he was released on February 8 under a ceasefire agreement, he soon learned the devastating truth: Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel were dead. Hamas murdered them on October 7, 2023. His brother Yossi, also kidnapped, had been killed in captivity as well.

Eli’s memoir, Hostage, out today, is the first published account by a released Israeli hostage. He writes in unflinching detail about being held in the tunnels, about his Hamas captors, and about his singular focus on survival.

I read the book, through tears, last week on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. Yom Kippur is a day of atonement and forgiveness, but it’s really a day of reckoning with life and death. The story Jews around the world read that morning is of Moses’s final speech to the Israelites before his death, delivered as they stand on the edge of the Promised Land—after slavery in Egypt, after 40 years of wandering in the desert and the loss of an entire generation. Moses tells them: “I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. Therefore choose life, so that you and your descendants may live.”

If anyone has earned a right to despair, to give up on life, it’s Eli Sharabi.

But he doesn’t. What’s remarkable about Eli is that he chose—and continues to choose—survival at every turn. He chooses life in the face of death. Again and again and again.

Click below to listen to our conversation, or scroll down for our favorite moments.

On being dragged away by his captors on 10/7:

Bari Weiss: This is what you write in your book: I look into my daughters’ eyes. They don’t scream, they don’t cry. They don’t even speak. They’re frozen in terror. I will never forget that look of terror in their eyes. And then they drag you away from your family, and you shout back to them: I’ll come back. That look of terror—is that the last thing you see of your daughters?

Eli Sharabi: Yes. I can’t forget their look. They were terrified. They couldn’t speak; they were frozen. They waited for their mother to join them in the kitchen but, unfortunately, they took me just before it happened.

I’ll come back—I tried to make this promise to them. It was horrible. For 491 days, I’m telling the other hostages that the day I am released I’ll take Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel to live in England.

BW: Did you have any idea what was going to happen to them?

ES: It didn’t cross my mind that they would kidnap women and children. Just 40 days later, the Palestinian family holding me hostage forgot to close the door and I could hear the nine o’clock news, and I heard a video of an Israeli mother and her son, shouting in Hebrew, to Benjamin Netanyahu to stop bombing Gaza and take them out from there. And then I understood that there were women and children as well in Gaza as hostages. That was the first time I started to cry, because I thought maybe Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel were in Gaza as well.

It was something really frightening to think about, because it was hell—24/7 of bombing, being chained by your legs, and humiliated. I didn’t want to think that Lianne and the girls were having that as well.

On being taken to the tunnels:

ES: We refused to climb down. I really negotiated with them. I said to them, No way. I’m not going to do that. Please take us to another place. After something like 30 seconds, maybe more than that, they start to get upset with me. They took their gun and pointed it at my head, and then you understand that you have to do it if you want to stay alive. I remembered my promise to my girls—that I’ll come back—so you choose life again.

BW: You choose life by going into the pit of hell.

ES: I needed to choose that, otherwise they’re going to kill me now. They have no problem killing you. So we climbed down, something like 50 meters underground. All darkness around you.

On visiting his family’s grave:

BW: You go to where [Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel] are buried. I wondered if you’d read from that chapter.

ES: We drive to Kfar HaRif—me and the two psychologists, who have been with me since my release. We are joined by my sister Osnat, our family’s army liaison Officer Sigal, and the nurse. Before we set out, the psychologists prepared me. We think together about what it will look like and what will happen there. They are managing the whole event and I trust them. We all sit in silence in the car. The scenery races past the windows. I need closure, I think to myself. I need to see it in my own eyes. I need to tell them I’m back. I promised them I’d come home and here I am. We reached the cemetery. Everyone gets out of the car. I walk toward the graves by myself, with Osnat by my side. The medical and welfare teams stay behind. We walk closer, Osnat leading me, until eventually she points and says: Here they are, Eli. I look at the three graves—Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel. The peaceful fields around us glisten. A blue sky is overhead; birds chirp. I break down crying. I don’t even try to stop myself. Osnat hugs me; I fall to my knees. I can’t see anything. Everything’s blurry—the sky, the view, the other headstones; the people who came with me. Everything fades away. Only Yahel, Noiya, and Lianne exist.

Forty minutes later, I tell Osnat: Okay, let’s go. She looks at me, puzzled. It’s okay, I tell her. Let’s go. I signal to everyone. It’s over, finished. I pick myself up, and start walking slowly toward the exit of the cemetery. This here is rock bottom. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it. Now, life.

BW: There are a lot of people who have heard about your story, and think to themselves: If something like this happened to me, I could not go on living. Can you explain to those people how you choose life?

ES: First of all, I love life. And second, I don’t think I have the privilege to cry all day, and stay in bed, and be depressed, because for 491 days, my great family, in Israel, in England, fought for me. My friends stopped their life to support my family. All of Israel went out from their houses, almost every week, and fought for me to come back. So I don’t have the privilege to not go on with my life. For me to be sad, or angry, I can’t find any meaning about that. No strength. For me to be busy and happy is much more meaningful for me. I’m sure that’s what would make Lianne, Noiya, and Yahel, and Yossi, my brother, proud of me.

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