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Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2025/10/06/israeli-hostage-gaza-hamas-captivity/
What 491 Days as a Hostage Taught Me about Hamas
(Washington Post) Eli Sharabi - On Oct. 7, 2023, terrorists broke into my home in Kibbutz Be'eri. My wife, Lianne, our daughters Noiya and Yahel and I hid in our safe room as the gunmen burned and murdered their way through the kibbutz. After they took me, I was bound and dragged into Gaza, where an ecstatic civilian mob - men, women, children - tried to rip me limb from limb. I did not know my wife and daughters had already been murdered. My first days as a hostage were spent in the basement of a well-off Gazan family's home. The father, who had worked in construction in Israel, spoke fluent English and even some Hebrew. Life upstairs was normal for the family while I lay below, my shoulders in wrenching pain from the tight ropes that bound me. I can speak Arabic and could understand perfectly well when the terrorists discussed their ideology. The murderers who broke into my house and slaughtered my wife and daughters were driven by blind hatred, which seemed to take precedence over all other motivations. On day 52 of my captivity I was moved into a tunnel with other Israeli hostages, where conditions rapidly deteriorated. Food deprivation and disease were routine. The stench of sewage was unbearable, and there were worms everywhere. Our captors also became more cruel. They replayed the Oct. 7 footage. Watching the murder and the torture seemed to invigorate them. Our legs were constantly shackled and we were regularly beaten and humiliated. It's important for the world to know that lasting peace can only come if the murderous ideology that we witnessed in Hamas and all those associated with them is defeated. Real change will require the wholesale rejection of a culture that fetishizes death.