Freed hostage Eli Sharabi’s new book, Hostage, ends with him visiting the graves of his wife, Lianne, and his daughters, Noiya and Yahel, for the first time after being released from nearly a year and a half of captivity in Gaza, during which he had hoped they were still alive following the Hamas attack on their home in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023.

“This here is rock bottom. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it,” Sharabi writes. “Now, life.”

The memoir tells a horrific story of 491 days of violence, deprivation and starvation. 

That final sentence of Sharabi’s memoir — “Now, life” — could sum up his post-captivity self. In an interview with Jewish Insider last month, Sharabi said he was determined to reassert his agency, take action on hostage advocacy and move forward in his life.

Sharabi seemed cheerful speaking about his recovery. He was still slimmer than his pre-captivity self, but no longer as gaunt as he was emerging from the tunnels in Gaza in which Hamas starved him, giving him only a stale pita to eat each day, at most.

“I’m getting stronger every day,” Sharabi said. “I make sure to exercise and have weekly therapy sessions and make sure to take care of myself. I am strong and positive and facing forward.”

Sharabi’s days are filled with meetings around Israel and the world advocating for the remaining hostages to be freed.

“From the moment I got out of Sheba [Medical Center], 10 days after being freed, it has been non-stop action,” he said. “I have a lot of trips abroad, meeting with government officials — presidents, prime ministers, members of parliament, foreign ministers — and a lot of lectures in Israel and around the world, to a lot of Jewish communities. … It’s non-stop, morning to night.” 

In his book, he recounts reassuring hostages Alon Ohel, who is still in Gaza, and Eliya Cohen and Or Levy, who have since been released, that he was sure their families were protesting and advocating for their release.

“It was important for Eliya and me to tell Or and Alon, who were more pessimistic about our chances, to get out and thought ‘maybe they forgot us,’” Sharabi recalled. “Eliya and I were very positive and said we had no doubt our families and good friends are not resting for a moment and doing all they could to free us.”

Sharabi said that when his captors would tell him about protests in the streets of Israel, they would say the demonstrations were against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he and his fellow hostages saw it as “the nation going out to fight for us. It gave us hope.”

When Sharabi was released, he saw that the scale of the hostage advocacy movement was beyond what he had imagined.

“When I got out and understood that it was masses of people in Israel, it excited me,” he said. “I met members of Jewish communities in New York, Chicago, Miami, London, Mexico. I meet Israelis and Jews all around the world and understand what they did all this time. It is very touching. I didn’t expect it at all. I expected my friends and family. I didn’t think that people would have posters of me at their holiday table. It’s heartwarming.” 

At home in Israel, however, there have been sharp political divisions about the looming deal to release the hostages in exchange for ending the war in Gaza. Some far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government oppose President Donald Trump’s plan, which calls to free all 48 remaining hostages — 20 of whom are thought to be alive — within three days, because they call to prioritize defeating Hamas.

“In Israel, everything is political,” Sharabi lamented. “It’s terrible. All of our elected officials, with no exception, are partners in this terrible thing. I think all the people of Israel are sick of everything being political. I think most people in Israel hate this.”

The hostages, Sharabi said, “are not about right and not about left.” His brother, Yossi, was also taken captive and was killed while in Hamas captivity, which the IDF found may have been caused by an IDF airstrike.

Sharabi had an almost paternal relationship with Ohel when Hamas held them captive together in the tunnels under Gaza, and he expressed relief to have seen Ohel in a new hostage video released by the terror group last month.

“He’s amazing,” Sharabi said. “If you told me a week after I met him that he would survive six or seven months alone, after I left him, I would have doubted it. I left him after a very positive process during which he strengthened himself and learned how to survive, that you can’t be nice all the time and can’t be naive. He developed resilience and isn’t shaken by every change and every fear.” 

Sharabi emphasized that, while in captivity, it is crucial to “understand that not everything is in our control, but we have the ability to choose how we respond.” 

“I’m optimistic that soon we will see [Ohel] united with his family, and soon after, I will reunite with him. I am looking forward to it,” he said. 

Sharabi describes his captors in detail in the book. Some were always cruel, while others snuck the hostages extra scraps of food. Some were true extremists, while others appeared to be in Hamas for the money. 

“There are no innocent people in Gaza,” he said, “not civilians and certainly not the people in Hamas. In the 52 days that I was aboveground, not in tunnels but with a family in a house, they made sure people outside would not hear or see me, because they thought people would come in and kill me.”

“I recognize that even within Hamas, after spending 24/7 with them for many months and having different conversations with them, I understand who is ideological and who stumbled into it because Hamas controls the financial faucets in Gaza,” Sharabi added. “Does that make them innocent? Of course not. The moment they got the order, I was shackled around my legs. If they were told to shoot me, they would have shot me. … Some did it for money, not ideology, but they starved me, humiliated me and beat me. It doesn’t make them innocent.”

Sharabi also called on the Western world to recognize that Hamas is part of a broader ideology that threatens them, as well.

“I recently got back from 10 days in Australia,” he recalled. “We flew to Canberra to meet the deputy prime minister and foreign minister, both of whom are, at the very least, not pro-Israel. It was important for me to tell them two things.” 

“First, disagreements with Israeli policy are fine. I, too, as a citizen, don’t always agree with Israeli policy. That’s what’s good about a democracy… We can say our opinions and disagree. But at the same time, even if they don’t think like Israelis and don’t have to care about me as an Israeli, they are part of the Commonwealth, and my wife and daughters were British and murdered in their homes with their British passports in their hands — the Hamas terrorists knew.”

Sharabi said his captors said to him time after time that “after Israelis and Jews, they will get to France, Britain, America and Spain. The whole world will be Islam.”

Second, Sharabi said he speaks out against antisemitism in his meetings with leaders.

“It cannot be that in 2025, Australian Jews are afraid to go out into the streets. It’s 2025, not 1940. That is [the leaders’] responsibility. They are not speaking out clearly enough against antisemitism. I’m not a politician or a diplomat, so I can say that each one of them is responsible. … Every Jew today is affected by the hate crimes in the world, and that is the responsibility of the government and elected officials,” he said.

Sharabi said his constant activity, including writing his memoir, “has a therapeutic side to it, to deal with [the experience] and not leave it all inside.”

“I don’t like to compare it to the Holocaust, but a lot of survivors didn’t talk, not even to their children,” he noted. “My psychologists, from the beginning, said … they never saw such a huge trauma. It’s not just the captivity, but also the huge loss of my wife, daughters and brother. It’s important to talk. It helps me a lot.”

As to why he doesn’t like to make comparisons between Oct. 7 and the Holocaust, when some Israelis have done so, Sharabi said that during the Holocaust, Jews were “a stateless people, a homeless people, with no government to take care of them.”

“There is a lot of anger in Israel in part because there is a country, there is an address that was supposed to take care of us and our security, and it failed,” he added. “It’s not like the Holocaust, so I don’t like the comparison. There were horrors there that we didn’t see here, like the gas chambers; instead there is a murderous terrorist organization.”

At the same time, Sharabi noted that in the months since his release in February, he has not been exposed to a lot of the details and footage of the Oct. 7 attacks, in which his wife and daughters were among the 132 Israelis murdered in his hometown, Kibbutz Be’eri: “I am being protected like a safe. I haven’t turned on the TV; I don’t watch my own interviews.”

“I have trouble grasping it,” he added.

Even without exposure to the horrors of Oct. 7, speaking and writing about his captivity means going back to the darkest moments of his life, repeatedly.

“I am connected to the pain. I recognize it; I have words for it. Not a day goes by that I don’t cry over it. I hear music on the radio in the car that reminds me of the girls,” he said. “But I also remember them with a lot of smiles, and when I cry, it’s about longing for them, not sadness. I am emotional about the good, when I remember my wife and my girls and their smiles.”

“It’s good for me to talk all the time. It’s important to me. I’m freeing it from my system, instead of leaving it inside,” he added.

Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said that she came away with optimism for the future of Syria from a meeting with Syrian President Ahmad al-Sharaa last month, while adding that she remains skeptical and emphasizing the need to “trust but verify.”

“This is an opportunity right now. Whereas before, we have been on opposing forces, now is the time when we can come together for the prosperity of the region and stability in Syria,” Ernst said at an American Jewish Committee event on Wednesday in Washington. “Yes, I’m skeptical, but I am optimistic.”

Ernst, a vocal supporter of Israel, joined a statement shortly after that meeting condemning Israel for carrying out strikes against Syrian government targets.

Ernst said that she’d had a striking exchange with al-Sharaa over their shared time in combat in Iraq — Ernst as a U.S. service member and al-Sharaa as a member of Al-Qaida.

“I told him I, as well, served in Iraq. He was kind of taken aback by that, but then we laughed,” Ernst said.

She said that she will give the new Syrian government the “benefit of the doubt, as long as they are earning that benefit.” But, she continued, “The minute things start going south, we no longer support and we made that very clear to the president while we were on that visit.”

She said that the best way to ensure that Syria turns toward the West and to prevent encroachment by Iran, Russia, China and Turkey is to maintain a presence and influence with Syria’s leadership.

Ernst — who has been among the most strident critics of Qatar in the Senate and argued on multiple occasions that it is not doing enough to pressure Hamas to free the hostages — offered a cautious response to the Israeli strike on Hamas leaders in Doha.

“We understand that Israel is in a place where they have said Hamas will be destroyed, end of story. We support them on that effort,” Ernst said. “The problem is when you are striking a partner nation who has been working so heavily on securing peace and stability in the Middle East, and that country on this particular strike happened to be Qatar, so the president was disappointed in that. I did not feel that it furthered our relationship” with Qatar.

She emphasized that, though Qatar is hosting Hamas leadership, it also hosts the largest U.S. Air Force base in the Middle East.

Addressing isolationist voices on both political sides, the retiring Ernst emphasized that relationships globally matter, and that the U.S. must maintain them.

“If you don’t have a seat at the table, you are not able to shape and influence the outcome,” Ernst said. “So it is very important that the United States remain engaged around the globe. Now I would also say presence is power.”

Following a visit to the Middle East, Sen. James Lankford (R-OK) said he’s very “optimistic” about the future of Lebanon under its new government, describing the country’s leaders as serious about centralizing power and demilitarizing Hezbollah.

Lankford and Sen. Angus King (I-ME) traveled last week to Baghdad and Erbil in Iraq, Beirut  and Amman, Jordan. Lankford continued on to Jerusalem while the Maine senator went on to Turkey. 

Lankford, in an interview with Jewish Insider in his Senate office on Thursday, said that he also heard from Iraqi partners that Tehran is not budging on its commitment to uranium enrichment and that regional leaders are supportive of sanctions relief for Syria.

Lankford pointed to reforms in banking rules to help allow for international investment and concerted action by the Lebanese government and Lebanese Armed Forces against Hezbollah as reasons for optimism.

“The Lebanese Armed Forces and the president were very clear: ‘We will be the defender of Lebanon. There’s not two armies, there’s one army,’” Lankford said. “They are working to demilitarize Hezbollah and to be able to make sure that they are the one army … I think there’s real progress and real opportunity.”

He said the LAF has undertaken hundreds of operations to move into and take over Hezbollah strongholds — which he said had been confirmed by U.S. military leadership — and Lebanese leaders were clear that they plan to continue to advance, seize weapons in Palestinian refugee areas and ultimately move into the Beqaa Valley, where many Hezbollah fighters have fled. 

“[Lebanese leaders] don’t want to be at war with Israel and they don’t want to have two militaries in their country,” Lankford emphasized. “They want to be Lebanon and have peaceful relationships with their neighbors.”

At the same time, he said that the prospect of normalization between Lebanon and Israel floated by some Trump administration officials appears further off. He said the issue came up in his discussions, but that Israel’s military presence inside Lebanon is a “sticking point” for Lebanon’s leadership.

“The Lebanese leadership is saying, for Israel, ‘We understand that you’re wanting to be able to have some leverage here to be able to get us to do our work. We are doing our work. This is our country, you need to back across the Blue Line,’” Lankford said, referring to the border between the Golan Heights and Lebanon. “What we all understand is that boundary, and they’re working to be able to solidify that. And I believe they’re very close.”

He said that on both the Israeli and Lebanese sides, officials volunteered their “overwhelming support” for Morgan Ortagus, the Trump administration’s deputy Middle East envoy, who sources said will depart her post soon. Lankford said that regional leaders viewed Ortagus as an “honest broker, someone who is legitimately working to try to get to a resolution in the area.”

He said that discussions about Iran’s nuclear program were a primary focus for many in the region, adding that he “heard loud and clear” from leaders in Iraq who have been in close contact with Tehran that Iran is not budging on its insistence on maintaining enrichment capacity.

“[Leaders in Iraq] said, ‘All they want is peaceful [enrichment] purposes and [Iran is] hopeful that they’re going to keep that and they’re hopeful for the negotiations,’” Lankford said. “And I just said, ‘I’m not in the negotiations but I could tell you, there’s not an interest in having a uranium enrichment program in Iran at all.’”

Asked about recent reports that the U.S. has put forward proposals that would allow Iran to continue enriching, either in an interim capacity or as part of a regional consortium, Lankford said that Iran’s centrifuges cannot continue operating.

He also said, in response to comments by Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Iranian proxy terrorism and ballistic missile development are not part of the ongoing talks, that the proxies and missiles are central to the U.S.’ issues with Iran, and “it all needs to be addressed.”

Lankford added that Iran cannot be allowed to continue developing a missile capable of delivering a nuclear weapon while it continues to enrich uranium.

“I can remember saying [in 2015] that the problem with JCPOA is that they can continue to do their weapons development towards a weapon that can deliver a nuclear weapon, while they have time to be able to [do] more study,” Lankford said. “So it provides them the two things they need, money and time, and they don’t have to slow down their weapons development.”

Lankford said that, throughout the region, he heard support for sanctions relief for the new leadership in Syria to allow the fledgling government a chance to coalesce.

“There’s also cautious skepticism about the new leadership there, to say they need to have a chance, but they need to pull together a government that respects the rights of the minority,” Lankford said. “Everybody was focused in on, how do you get a unified Syria so it’s not split up? With so much diversity in Syria, how do you actually make that work?”

He said he hadn’t discussed the prospect of sanctions relief directly with Israeli leaders, but said that Israeli leaders are very wary of Turkish influence in Syria, and of Ankara effectively attempting to annex the country.

“That’s a real threat if the Turks decide they’re just going to keep moving south and dominate that, the Israelis are not comfortable with that at all,” Lankford said. “Syria needs to be Syria, and not Turkey South, and the prime minister [Benjamin Netanyahu] was very, very clear about that.”

He said that the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, Nechirvan Barzani, said he’s encouraging Syrian Kurds to focus their attention on the new Syrian government in Damascus and on establishing themselves as “part of the new Syria, not a separate entity … and that’s not going to happen if they just stay to the east and don’t actually go engage with the new government.”

Lankford said Israeli leaders were “skeptical” that a ceasefire and hostage-release deal with Hamas, as pushed by the Trump administration, is achievable, and said Israeli leaders told him they plan to continue military operations until Hamas agrees to release the hostages, though he said all parties involved want to see a ceasefire and hostage release.

“[Hamas] could turn over the hostages at any moment and they’ve chosen not to do that, and so we’re going to go get our hostages,” he said, characterizing Israeli leaders’ position on the issue, adding that Hamas cannot remain in power.

He said that Israel is also focused on eliminating remaining Hamas fighters and weapons and said that Israel still has “a long way to go in the tunnels,” but is working to create “safe areas for people to live free of Hamas” and receive food aid.

The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the new U.S. and Israeli-backed aid delivery mechanism in Gaza, began operations while Lankford was in Israel, and he said that it was achieving its desired results in getting food to Palestinians free of Hamas control.