The image of Israeli hostage Eli Sharabi being released from Gaza a little over two weeks ago, looking gaunt and weak, shocked and angered Israel and leaders around the world.
His brother Sharon, who fought for months to secure his release, has told Sky News that Eli was tortured by Hamas and barely saw daylight but is slowly recovering his strength after almost sixteen months in Gaza.
“Since day one, Eli was held in extremely difficult conditions, dozens of metres beneath the ground and the treatment he received from his captors was very, very humiliating and very threatening,” said Sharon.
Sharon, being an observant Jew, didn’t watch the live television feed of his brother’s release because it happened over shabbat, but he barely recognised his sibling when they were reunited a few hours later in hospital.
Eli Sharabi and his family
Eli being escorted by Hamas fighters before being handed over to the Red Cross. Pic: AP
“Eli was starved in an extreme way. He was humiliated, beaten. He didn’t receive minimal conditions for living. The most basic things a person needs for his health – to breathe clean air, to drink clean water.
“He was kept in very difficult conditions in captivity, which included extreme starvation, torture, humiliations, for 16 months in the tunnels of Hamas, I think his appearance says it all.”
Eli was taken from his home in kibbutz Be’eri on 7 October 2023.
“I will be back, I’ll come back to you,” he had promised his British wife Lianne, and teenage daughters Noiya and Yahel as he was being dragged into Gaza.
Sharon Sharabi
They were murdered shortly after.
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As Eli was paraded on stage by Hamas before his release, he said he was looking forward to being reunited with them – it was only when he reached Israel that he found out they were dead.
“Only once he was in the safe arms of Israel, Eli received the news, when he was told that our mother and older sister were waiting for him [at the border],” explained Sharon.
The family had been given specialist advice to help them deliver the tragic news to Eli.
Eli Sharabi and his family
“Then he asked, ‘where are Lianne and the girls?’ And when they told him that they hadn’t survived October 7th, it broke his heart.
“We know that from this extremely low point, the lowest point possible, you cannot go down further. We are going to embrace Eli, and we are going to let him process this terrible loss.”
Eli’s release, after 490 days in captivity, was a bittersweet moment for the family.
Yossi Sharabi, Eli and Sharon’s brother was also kidnapped on 7 October 2023 and his body is still in Gaza.
The Sharabi brothers
Hamas said Yossi had been killed by Israeli airstrikes, which an IDF investigation said was likely.
Though it couldn’t rule out the possibility he was murdered by his Hamas captors.
The family are campaigning to get him back so he can be buried properly. Any disruption to the ceasefire could threaten that.
“We’ve been in this struggle for 16 months now and I think that everyone deserves, at the very least, for their people to be brought back for a final resting place.
“If not on their feet and alive, then at least, even if that person lost his life, he should be brought back with dignity, he needs to be given the proper respect, to be brought back to his soil, to his land.
“Yossi is sorely missed, it’s a great loss to mankind in general, but especially to his family, his wife and daughters, who had survived Hamas’s brutal attack on October 7th.
“And my commitment, just as I fought for Eli, I’ll fight for Yossi, and for all the hostages, until the very last one, in order to try and process what happened to us and especially to try and return to my private ordinary life, the life I had before October 7th.”
The first phase of the Gaza ceasefire is almost complete – four more bodies of hostages are due to be released on Thursday – but there has been little negotiation on the next phase.
Unless an agreement can be reached to temporarily extend phase one, then the war could resume, and with 63 hostages still being held in Gaza.
