Hostage by Eli Sharabi translated into English by Eylon Levy

A couple of weeks back was chatting with an American-Jewish writer who just returned from Israel and on her storytelling voice she was rhetorically asking how the cruelties of 7/10 were possible? What monsters can do what the Hamas terrorists did to women, children, other humans?

Hostage by former hostage Eli Sharabi, translated into English by Eylon Levy is a testimony that can be only compared with the similar Shoah testimonies. It shows a permanence of the evil, generated this time from individuals growing up in a fanatic cultish ignorance or cultivating the same ignorance for the sake of illicit political and economic power. 

For 491 days, Sharabi, who is of Moroccan-Yemeni origin and an Arabic speaker, was kept barefoot, moved from one tunnel to another, humiliated, starved and ´offered´ to convert to Islam - as it happened to other captives as well. He was submitted to psychological terror, being lied they were abandoned and that Israel will be soon destroyed. 

Those fanatics for whom Titanic is a great newly released movie, clapped their hands for Iran, and predicted a massive Islamic take-over of the ´West´. They nicknamed Sharabi Abbas, as in Mahmoud Abbas or by his nom de guerre, Abu Mazen, whom they despised. 

Sharabi and his other fellow hostages nicknamed their guardians as well, based on their physical features or behavior. It was their distraction in between the verbal and physical aggression they suffered, and their deteriorating health situation. Food, as in the Shoah memoirs, plays an important role in the survival strategies. But bravely, the solidarity won in the front of the efforts of their captors to create dissent in the group, due to the food rations. Every Friday evening they recited the Shabbes songs, and the next day the Havdala songs. They prayed in the morning. Another example of strength and survival.

Sharabi found out the day of his liberation that his brother, Yossi, also took captive from kibbutz Be´eri was killed. His beloved wife and daughters were killed on 7/10 and although he imagined this scenario, he was informed about only upon his return to Israel. 

It is so much tension in this book and you feel overwhelmed by the weight of the dramatic realities of the last two years. I think we should not try finding an answer about the human nature and how was it possible, but to find the best ways to never allowed such a cruelty to be committed. It is like the post-WWII history is written over and over again. 

I´ve had access to the book in the audiobook format, extraordinarily read by actor and coach Geoffrey Cantor.