A HOSTAGE’S HOPE

ELI SHARABI’S MEMOIR OF 400 DAYS IN GAZA’S TUNNEL RAISES SO MANY QUESTIONS.

I just finished reading Eli Sharabi’s book Hostage, the first of what will certainly be an extensive literature of survivors of October 7 and its aftermath.

The author survived, so we know he will get out alive, obviously. We know how it ends. Sort of. But the harrowing story descends into greater horror by the page, the worst gut-punch to the reader coming at the very moment of Sharabi’s liberation.

I usually hesitate to make parallels with the Holocaust, which is incomparable on so many levels with any other aspect of history. It is impossible, though, to ignore the parallels here: The scarcity of food for the starving hostages, the weaponization of meager rations and the natural yet animalistic response by Sharabi and those with whom he is held captive over whether to preserve one’s own life by seizing any morsel one can obtain or pooling what little food came their way equally between them.

There are so many themes in the book that have unavoidable parallels — at least for me, as someone who has spent time reading Holocaust literature.

There is the detached sadism of the captors but also the occasional humanity. Sharabi believes that some of his jailers were driven not by ideology but, basically, because they needed a job.

There is also the chilling reality that the captors may have been, in the context of larger Palestinian society, the good guys. Here is something that stands out profoundly in Sharabi’s book: the captors were almost universally cruel and sadistic. But they were also, it seems, the only thing standing between the hostages and the masses of “ordinary” Palestinians who, given the chance, Sharabi implies, would rip the hostages limb from limb. When the captives are transported from one place to another, it is among the most dangerous moments of their captivity. They know that if the Palestinians going about their business on the streets were to recognize them as Israeli hostages, even their armed guards would be hard pressed to protect them from the savagery of the mob.

This was one of the horrific realities of October 7 itself: the thousands of “ordinary” Palestinians who followed the terrorists through the fences and looted, raped and murdered in a shocking illustration of the capability of “ordinary” people to perpetrate extraordinary atrocities. Which raises a difficult question: is this what ordinary people are capable of? Or is it something more specific, of which ordinary Palestinians are capable?

We have seen photographs of ordinary Germans whose human inhibitions were unchecked as they acted out against their Jewish neighbors. Germany was considered at the time (or at least a few years before) to have been the pinnacle of human civilization. Nobody has ever accused the Palestinians of that. But how much of October 7 and after is the dark side of human nature and how much is specific to a particular group?

Questions like these invite accusations of racism. But what Sharabi illustrates quite effectively is that it is nothing inherent to Palestinians’ race or religion, it is not that they were born this way. Palestinians have been subjected to one of history’s most comprehensive processes of indoctrination.

At various times, he and his fellow captives were able to engage with their captors, who are absolutely convinced that Israelis in general, but their prime minister in particular, are determined to kill every Palestinian.

From the limited conversations with his captors that Sharabi recounts, there is never so much as a speck of a possibility for coexistence. The Jews must go back to where they came from and every inch of the land they call Palestine must be Jew-free.

In a rare instance of temper, Sharabi, who has learned to placate his abductors, lashes out after one of the terrorists asks one of the hostages where his parents came from. When the hostage says Iran, the Hamasnik tells him that’s where he should go back to.

Hostage is a succinct and powerful book, easily completed in a long sitting. Its messages, though, continue to percolate.

The book begins moments before Sharabi is taken captive and ends hours after his liberation. You learn a fair bit about his life before but, as you turn the final page, you are forced to ponder what the future holds for him, for the other released hostages, for their families, and for an entire country with something close to universal PTSD.

It is hard to find silver linings in any of this history. If we must, it is the magnificence of human resilience. That is, ultimately, the theme of Hostage. One can’t help wondering, though, if what lies ahead for the released hostages will not be as emotionally challenging, albeit not as physically challenging perhaps, as what they have already endured.

Some of the most inspiring stories of human resistance we have are those of survivors of the Holocaust who, carrying the physical and emotional scars of humanity’s most dehumanizing experiment in sadism, mostly went on with remarkable levels of success, to live constructive and even happy lives. And they did so with almost none of the psychological, psychiatric or other supports we now take for granted.

But what about the people Sharabi left behind when he was liberated? What will become of the captors he got to know? What will become of the seething mobs he knew would murder him with their bare hands given the opportunity?

There is much talk now about the rebuilding of Gaza. The destruction of infrastructure over the past two years has been, put mildly, vast. The human destruction, the loss of life, has been unbelievably tragic.

But a different form of human destruction — the destruction of humanity — has been ongoing in Gaza, as well as in the West Bank, for 80 years. That destruction was not perpetrated by Israel and it has nothing to do with Israelis or Jews (except in the manner that the compass of the antisemite always points north to the Jews).

Here again, comparatively recent history holds the only kernel of hope. The denazification that happened after 1945 in Germany was obviously imperfect but it was, for all that, close to a miracle of human redemption. Who knows what individual people carry in their hearts, but as a society, Germany quickly rebuilt itself as one of the world’s most inclusive societies that safeguards human rights, rule of law and diversity. The rebuilding of Japan — physically and societally — is another example to consider.

Am I hopeful? As one of the captors told Sharabi, if the current war does not eradicate the Jews from “Palestine,” then the war waged by his grandchildren or his great-great-grandchildren will do the job. They are patient.

The rebuilding of Gaza (and of Palestine more broadly) needs to involve far more than buildings and roads.

It needs to reconstruct (or, perhaps, construct for the first time) a Palestinian people who care more about the lives and well-being of their children than they do about destroying the Jews and their country.

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