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By Joel B. Pollak (Breitbart)
Freed Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi has described the conditions in which he was held by Hamas in Gaza, including torture and starvation that caused him to lose 40% of his body weight until he was released earlier this month.
“Ilana, do you know what it means to open the fridge?”
Chilling testimony from released hostage Eli Sharabi on the starvation in Hamas captivity. pic.twitter.com/q9wfcKzlOS
— Eli Kowaz – איליי קואז (@elikowaz) February 27, 2025
Sharabi, 52, only learned upon arriving in Israel that his wife, Lianne, and his two daughters, Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were murdered by Hamas on October 7, 2023, during their terror attack on the community of Kibbutz Be’eri.
He looked so emaciated upon his release that even President Donald Trump expressed shock from afar, saying that the Israeli hostages looked “like Holocaust survivors.” And indeed, Sharabi’s account reinforces that parallel.
The Times of Israel reported:
Sharabi, who lost over 30 kilograms (66 pounds) in captivity — some 40% of his body weight — and weighed just 44 kg (97 lbs) upon his release, said terrorists held the four hostages in iron chains and sometimes beat or humiliated them, and that they subsisted for months on a single plate of pasta each day.
…
He said the hunger pains were unbearable and that getting his captors to give them a dried-out date or a quarter of a piece of bread felt like a victory.
Sharabi reflected on the miracle of simply being able to open a refrigerator, once back in Israel, to eat:
Sharabi also spoke about meeting American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who left a lasting impression that helped other hostages endure: “Hersh told us a sentence that stayed with us, and gave us strength, and didn’t allow us to lose hope — I knew him for two days and he gave me a sentence that stayed with me — he said: ‘When there’s a why, always find the how.’”
The first phase of the hostage-and-ceasefire deal with Hamas ended this week, with 63 hostages still in Gaza, of whom 24 are thought to be alive. Negotiations are under way for the release of the remaining hostages.
Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Agenda: What Trump Should Do in His First 100 Days, available for pre-order on Amazon. He is also the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.
