On October 7, 2023, Hamas militants stormed Kibbutz Be'eri. Eli Sharabi, the kibbutz's CFO and a father of two, was separated from his wife Lianne and daughters Noiya and Yahel, then dragged into 491 days of captivity in Gaza's underground tunnels.
Ben Cole reconstructs Eli's ordeal through interviews, documented evidence, and firsthand accounts. What emerges is the portrait of a man tested beyond human limits ;beaten, starved, isolated,who discovered upon release that his family had been killed in the initial attack. This biography doesn't offer redemption. It offers something harder: the truth about what captivity does to a person, and what it means to keep living when everything has been taken.
Eli's transformation from victim to advocate happened not through healing, but through necessity. His memoir *Hostage* sparked national debate about Israel's hostage policy. His speeches at the UN and meetings with world leaders forced uncomfortable conversations about the humans behind political negotiations. Cole shows us a man who channeled unbearable grief into action—not because it brought peace, but because silence felt like a second death.
This is biography as witness. Cole traces Eli's roots in Yemenite and Moroccan Jewish culture, his life in the kibbutz system, his marriage to a British volunteer, and the quiet joys of fatherhood—all building toward the rupture of October 7th. The book maps both the external journey of captivity and release, and the internal landscape of a man learning that survival and living are not the same thing.
Eli Sharabi's life continues in that tension: between memory and movement, between honoring the dead and fighting for those still missing, between the person he was and whoever he's becoming. This biography captures a life interrupted, then redirected—one man's refusal to let violence have the final word.
For readers seeking to understand the October 7th attacks beyond headlines, for those grappling with their own grief, or for anyone who believes that bearing witness matters—this book offers no easy answers, only essential ones. Eli's story demands to be read, not because it comforts, but because it refuses to look away.
