Freed hostage Eli Sharabi asks ‘Where was the world?’ during harrowing testimony at UN

Eli Sharabi speaks before the United Nations Security Council in New York, describing the horrors of his 491 days in Hamas captivity before his release last month, telling them how he was abandoned to his fate by international humanitarian organizations.

“Where was the UN? Where was the Red Cross? Where was the world?” Sharabi asks members of the Security Council at a special briefing on the hostage crisis.

“Every day [Hamas] told us: The world has abandoned you, no one is coming,” Sharabi continues.

He describes the psychological and physical torture he endured in Hamas captivity, including being held “50 meters underground” in “chains so tight they ripped my skin.”

According to Sharabi, hostages received “one bath a month” with a bucket of cold water, were fed “a piece of pita, maybe a sip of tea,” at best, and endured brutal beatings and ridicule at the hands of their captors.

He gives firsthand testimony of witnessing Hamas terrorists “eat many meals a day,” from stolen UN aid which they withheld from hostages and civilians.

Sharabi tells the Security Council that just before his release, Hamas terrorists showed him a picture of his older brother, Yossi, laughing as they told him that he had been murdered in captivity. “It was like they brought a massive hammer down on me,” says Sharabi.

Yossi’s body is still being held by Hamas in Gaza.

Holding up a picture of his family members’ graves, Sharabi describes the moment he discovered, after returning to Israel in February, that rather than waiting for him at home, his wife and two daughters had been murdered on October 7.

He recalls the day they were murdered, saying “As they dragged me out, I called out to my girls, I will be back. I had to believe that. But that was the last time I ever saw them. I didn’t know I should have said goodbye, forever.”

“I’m here today because I survived and I prevailed,” says Sharabi, “but that is not enough…not when 59 hostages are still there.”

“I am not a diplomat. I am a survivor,” he tells the UN, after the gruesome account.

“If you stand for humanity, prove it,” he concludes. “Bring them all home.”