During his 491 days in the literal dark — starved, beaten and held captive in a Gaza tunnel network hundreds of feet underground — Eli Sharabi had one hope keeping him going: being reunited with his wife, Lianne, and his daughters.

Noiya was 16 and Yahel was 13 when Hamas terrorists tore through the family’s home in Kibbutz Be’eri, in southern Israel, on October 7, 2023, and dragged their father away. The last memory he had of his girls as he cried out, ” “I’ll come back!” was “their eyes frozen in horror.”

“The belief that they’re alive, my concern for them, gives me strength,” Sharabi recalls in “ Hostage ,” his memoir account of being held hostage . 10

When the business manager finally found out in February of this year that he would be going home, he allowed himself to im

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