Eli Sharabi’s story is the kind of gut-wrenching account that should wake every decent person in America up to the evil the world is facing. Kidnapped on October 7, 2023 during the barbaric Hamas onslaught, Sharabi survived 491 days in captivity before his release on February 8, 2025, and now bears the unbearable knowledge that his home and life were destroyed in an instant. His testimony is both a warning and a call to action for nations that still hesitate to name terror for what it is.
On that same October morning his wife, Lianne, and daughters Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were butchered in their home’s safe room — a fact he only learned after he was finally freed. The human cost is not an abstract casualty number in a briefing; it is a family wiped out, dreams murdered, and a community scarred forever. We should remember each name and refuse the media’s attempts to flatten these tragedies into statistics.
Sharabi’s memoir and interviews lay out the brutal reality he endured: chained in dark tunnels, starving on moldy bread, beaten and dehumanized by his captors, yet clinging to the promise he’d return to his family. These are not cinematic exaggerations but the lived facts of men taken by an enemy that celebrates slaughter. Americans who still believe in the dignity of human life must hear this plainly and let it shape policy and public opinion.
Remarkably, Sharabi has chosen the harder path of refusing permanent rage; he says the hope of coming home kept him alive, even though that hope was tragically misplaced. That personal grace does not mean forgetting or forgiving the monstrous deeds that created his loss — it means using his suffering to demand justice and the rescue of those who remain. Courage coupled with conviction is exactly what leaders ought to emulate, not the appeasement and moral equivalency we’ve too often seen.
His book Hostage — first published in Israel and due for English release in the United States on October 7, 2025 — is the first memoir by a returned captive and will serve as a necessary record of what happened on that terrible day and in the months that followed. Sharabi’s account should be read by every policymaker who pretends the Middle East conflict can be resolved without confronting the violent Islamist forces that perpetrated these atrocities. History is written by witnesses; Americans need to listen to witnesses, not to gutless talking heads.
Far from retreating into private grief, Sharabi has thrown himself into public advocacy for the dozens still held captive, traveling, testifying, and insisting that no one be forgotten. That resolve — to keep pressure on governments and international bodies until every hostage is free — is the kind of tenacity our side should champion, not the hand-wringing compromise favored by those who would rather sign soft statements than secure results. The moral clarity he demands is the same clarity America must provide in support and pressure.
Let’s be clear: Hamas is a criminal terrorist organization, and any effort to sanitize, negotiate away, or normalize its actions is a betrayal of the victims and of civilization. We should demand that our leaders stand with Israel unambiguously, apply every diplomatic and material tool to free hostages, and cut off any channel that enables terror. Weakness invites more violence; strength backed by principle brings the prospect of real peace and justice.
For hardworking Americans who still believe in right and wrong, Eli Sharabi’s story should harden conviction and spur action — to support survivors, to press elected officials, and to stand with allies who fight barbarism at our doorstep. We will honor the fallen best not by forgetting them in a news cycle but by insisting that their killers answer for every life taken and that the living receive the help they need to rebuild. This is what solidarity looks like, and it is the duty of patriots everywhere to make sure the world does not look away.
