Eli (Elie) Sharabi

My pleasure.

Thank you very much.

We were in our house in Kibbutz Be'erim, me, my wife, my two daughters.

On October 7th morning, we had alone in the kibbutz, and we'd been in a safe room.

Four hours later,

10 terrorists from Hamas arrived to our house, invaded to our house and kidnapped me and murdered my wife and my two daughters.

They are British citizens and murdered them with their British passport in their hands.

And I was kidnapped to Gaza.

and I've been there for 491 days most of them 440 days from them I've been in Hamas tunnels 50 meters underground

It was awful.

It was, you know, the worst thing I could ever imagine.

You know, for 491 days, it was my hope to see them running towards me and hugging me.

And I promised them I'll come back and I will survive for them.

And unfortunately, the social worker from the IDF announced me that only my mother and my sister waiting for me.

And they will tell me what happened.

And of course, she didn't need to tell me anything because I understood the worst case, the worst scenario happened for me.

And since then, you know, this loss and the grief, they are with me every moment of my day.

But I decided it would be the long side of my life and not the start of my life.

The people need to understand that Hamas is a terror organization, very fundamentalistic jihad.

They have no boundaries, not at all.

They starved us, they chained us, they beat us, they humiliate us every day.

And

In every conversation I had with them, every conversation, they said two things.

First of all, they keep coming back to Israel in 26, 27, 28, and to kill all of us.

They don't care if it will take 100 or 200 years.

They will do it eventually.

And after they finish with the Israelis and the Jews, they come to Britain and France and Germany and the US, because for them, all of the world should be Muslims.

And there's only one religion in the world, it's Islam.

So first of all, nobody tried to help us, not civilians and not Hamas people anyway.

Even more than that, Hamas

And, you know, terrorists actually afraid, were afraid all the time from the civilians, from outside that will hear us in this apartment and they will come in and they will inch us and they will kill them as well.

And the conditions in the Hamas tunnels, 50 meters underground,

Most of the time it's dark and the hygienic condition is awful.

There's no running water, no soap, no toothpaste.

You wash yourself every six weeks with half a bucket of cold water and worms all over the place, rats and roaches and...

And from then, of course, as I said, as I mentioned before, humiliations and violence and starvation was the worst thing ever.

You understand you cannot wake up every morning and expect to go home today.

So you have to have a routine.

and that the time will pass you know without to get insane uh so we prayed every morning we tried to train like moving us because we were chained on our legs so we were uh and most of the time we were lying down on the on the mattress or the floor and you have to move yourself a little bit and you're talking you're um you're singing

Um, you keep your hope all the time.

Um, and that's how you, you know, um, trying that, uh, the day will, uh, will pass until someone will come and tell you that you're going home.

Um, from Hamas, we just, uh, you know, where they try to say to us, there's, there's no Israel anymore.

And everybody sent missiles to Israel and, um,

and almost destroy Israel.

And the Israeli government and the Israeli civilians forgot all about us.

And that's what they've tried to do all the time.

Yes, they were really, really proud that we are dividing in Israel.

And they said the protest is against Netanyahu and all the Israelis doesn't want Netanyahu to be the prime minister.

And for them, it was a victory, you know, that we are dividing and we are not united.

So because of that, after my release, most of my, when I speak to people, I mention how much it's important to be united and to show all the world that we are one nation.

And this is the only way that we can defeat our enemies.

You're asking if it's a possibility that Hamas will change or what?

I have no idea.

I'm not an expert.

I'm not going to give any suggestion to this to my government or to the army.

I'm really not an expert in that.

Really, really, really, really just happy that, first of all, the all-day-life hostages came back to their families and are with the families now and they can recover.

And we are happy that it's...

a kind of a peace process or agreement in the area.

Two years of war didn't do anything good for Israel or for Israelis.

since october 7th all the israelis in trauma and i think after two years and they can start to heal a little bit from this day and from all these two years with they know with missiles all over the place from iran from hezbollah from gaza

and from the court in Yemen.

So we are happy for now, for the quiet time now, as much as we can get.

And that's it.

Thank you very much for having me.

Thank you.