WASHINGTON POST
What 491 days as a hostage taught me about Hamas
Eli Sharabi
October 6, 2025

On Oct. 7, 2023, terrorists broke into my home in Kibbutz Be’eri. My wife, Lianne, our daughters Noiya and Yahel and I hid in our safe room as the gunmen burned and murdered their way through the kibbutz. After they took me, I was seized, bound and dragged into Gaza. My first experience was not only with Hamas fighters but also with an ecstatic civilian mob — men, women, children — fighting to try to rip me limb from limb. The Hamas terrorists needed to push the mob back. I did not know my wife and daughters had already been murdered. The hope that they were alive carried me through 491 days of captivity, a hope that was only destroyed upon my release. READ MORE

COMMENTARY Seth Mandel: To Hell and Back “There is also a pragmatic reason for Israel’s commitment to redeeming captives. It is a source of legitimacy for the IDF. As a nation with full conscription, the basic deal Israelis make with their government is this: We give you our sons and daughters, and then you give them back. The common expression in Israel is that its soldiers are ‘everyone’s children.’ This is more than a mere sentimental point; it is a crucial source of military and social cohesion.”

TIMES OF ISRAEL Dead hostages’ families worry about condition in which they will be returned, if at all Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are holding 48 hostages, including 47 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023. They include the bodies of at least 26 confirmed dead by the IDF. Twenty are believed to be alive and there are grave concerns for the well-being of the two others, Israeli officials have said. Among the bodies held by Hamas is an IDF soldier, Hadar Goldin, killed in Gaza in 2014.