Two faces, both strange – a hostage’s story

06 November 2025, The Tablet

Eli Sharabi

ALAMY/AP, ARIEL SCHALIT

The fastest-selling book in Israeli history is about terrible fear, trauma and the aching quandary of clashing religions.

Sometimes a reviewer reads a book so you don’t have to. It doesn’t mean the reviewer finds it easy. Eli Sharabi – unluckily for his Hamas capturers, who seem to have picked him up haphazardly, thinking he was a soldier – is a Big Fish, a business officer at his kibbutz, a chief financial officer, fluent in Arabic. He is a global advocate, now, for hostages.

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