'You have to be very, very strong': Freed October 7 hostage describes 491 days in captivity in new memoir

After seeing phone messages and videos that kibbutzim were being ravaged on October 7, Eli Sharabi thought surrendering himself to Hamas terrorists would save his British-born wife and two daughters. Instead, he spent 491 days as a hostage in Gaza and, upon his release in February 2025, learned they had been murdered minutes after he was dragged from their Kibbutz Be’eri home.

In Hostage, the first full-length memoir by a released hostage from that day’s massacre, the Yemenite-Moroccan Israeli recounts starvation...