After 491 Days in Captivity, Israeli Hostage Returns Home to a Heartbreaking Truth”
After 491 days in Hamas captivity, Israeli journalist Eli Sharabi has finally returned home — but what awaited him was a devastating truth no one could ever prepare for.
Sharabi, a resident of Kibbutz Be’eri, was abducted during the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel — the same assault that saw hundreds of Israelis taken hostage and entire families wiped out. For nearly a year and a half, he endured unimaginable conditions in Gaza — cut off from the outside world, surviving on scraps, and clinging to the hope that his family was waiting for him.
When his release finally came on February 8, 2025, as part of a hostage-prisoner exchange deal, Sharabi was told by his captors that his loved ones were dead — his wife Lian, and his two daughters, Noya and Yahel. But the truth was far more painful: their deaths were real. The news wasn’t a psychological weapon this time — it was reality.
Family members say Sharabi was “broken but determined” to come home, having lost more than 30 kilograms during captivity. But the emotional scars run far deeper. His mother, upon seeing him again, said: “He came back a shadow of himself — but he came back. That’s what matters.”
Eli’s story has become a symbol of both hope and heartbreak in Israel — a reminder of the cost of conflict, the resilience of the human spirit, and the cruel toll of misinformation and trauma faced by hostages.
As he begins the long road to recovery, Israelis and people around the world are rallying around his story — a man who survived the unimaginable, only to face the unthinkable.
