From the Liveblog of
Saturday, February 8, 2025
‘He looks as though he’s been to Belsen’: Released hostage Eli Sharabi’s family in UK thrilled he’s free, horrified at his condition
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Gillian and Pete Brisley watch the handover of their son-in-law, Eli Sharabi, from their home in Britain with bittersweet emotion, thrilled that he was finally free but horrified at his physical condition.
Their daughter Lianne — Sharabi’s wife — and their granddaughters, Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were killed by Hamas terrorists in their home’s safe room at Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023.
“At the moment I can hardly talk,’’ a shaken Gillian Brisley says before handing the phone to her husband, who comments on how fragile Sharabi appeared.
“He looks as though he’s been to Belsen,’’ Pete Brisley says, referring to the World War II concentration camp.
Earlier, his family said they didn’t know whether Sharabi had been told that his wife and two teenage daughters were killed in Hamas’s October 7, 2023, onslaught on southern Israel.
“I just hope that he already knows, because it’s just going to be another layer of torture for him to have survived for the 490 days and then to come out to that piece of news,’’ his wife’s brother Stephen Brisley told the BBC before his release.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
The Times of Israel Community.