Former Hostage Details Starvation and Beatings by Hamas Captors

Photo Credit: Abed Rahim Khatib/Flash90

Hamas's Al-Qassam Brigades parade Israeli captive Eli Sharabi in Deir al-Balah, the Gaza Strip, before handing him over to the International Red Cross, Feb 8, 2025.

A recently released Israeli hostage whose wife and children were murdered in the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, described being chained, beaten and starved by terrorists throughout 16 months of captivity in the Gaza Strip, he said on Thursday.

Eli Sharabi, 53, who lost more than 66 pounds and weighed just 97 pounds upon his release on Feb. 8, told Israel’s Channel 12 that he was kept in iron chains the entire time and was intermittently beaten or otherwise humiliated as he and the three other hostages he was with subsisted for months on end on a single plate of pasta a day.

“Some [captives] were chained part of the time. I was chained for 16 months. Heavy locks tore into my flesh,” Sharabi said.

“People should really think when they open a fridge at home, it’s everything. It’s everything to open a fridge,” he said. “That’s what you dream of every day. You don’t care about the beatings you get. They beat you, they’re breaking my ribs, and I don’t care; give me another half-pita.”

He recounted that when the four hostages received pita, they would break it into equal parts, keeping it until 10 p.m. and then eating it piece by piece over 10 to 15 minutes, “so you can get through the night.”

The former hostage looked so emaciated on his release that he drew comparisons to Holocaust survivors.

Sharabi, who was abducted from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri on the border with Gaza, said he had no access to the news and only learned that his wife and two daughters were killed on Oct. 7.

“I thought I was returning to my family,” he told Channel 12. “I had no idea.”

“I’m not angry,” he said. “I was lucky I had Lianne for 30 years. I was lucky I had those amazing daughters for years.”