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Source: https://freebeacon.com/culture/eli-the-survivor/
Eli the Survivor
(Washington Free Beacon) Elliott Abrams - Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi's book Hostage is now available in English. It is a classic work about captivity - joining Natan Sharansky's Fear No Evil about his years in the Gulag, and Viktor Frankl's account in Man's Search for Meaning of his years in Nazi concentration camps - examining the human spirit under the worst possible circumstances. It begins on Oct. 7 and ends with his release from Gaza after 491 days in captivity - and his visit to the graves of his wife Lianne and his daughters. He did not know that his family was murdered, and living for them was a key part of his own survival. Sharabi thinks of his family but says, "I refuse to let myself sink into longing. I refuse to let myself drown in pain. I am surviving. I am a hostage. In the heart of Gaza. A stranger in a strange land. In the home of a Hamas-supporting family. And I'm getting out of here. I have to. I'm getting out of here. I'm coming home." Sharabi repeatedly says to himself that he and the other captives are on a mission: "We're on a mission to survive." It isn't only for his wife and children that Sharabi fights; it is for himself as well. "I want to live. I love life. I crave it....I tell myself: Eli, focus. It is what it is. This is the situation. You have no idea what's happened to your family. You have no way of knowing their fate. You have no control over how much food you were given, no control over how clean your environment is, no control over your freedom. So focus on what you can control. Channel your strength towards the things you can manage - and stay yourself." This is how Sharabi stays alive and sane through months of near starvation, cruelty from guards, psychological torture, beatings, and month after month in dank, airless tunnels deep under the earth. The end of the story is tragic, because when he is released Sharabi is met by his mother and his sister - and immediately realizes that his wife and daughters cannot greet him because they are gone. Sharabi demands to visit their graves, and breaks down and sobs there for 40 minutes. Then "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." The writer is Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations.