Inside View May/Jun 2026
If I had met Eli Sharabi before Hamas’s massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, I might have had a much different story to tell you. Perhaps he and I would have shared an enjoyable, mundane conversation about our lives. We are nearly the same age. We are both married and have enjoyed raising two daughters. But on that dreadful October day, Eli’s tranquil life was ripped away from him and replaced with one of cruelty and suffering.
I recently listened to Eli speak at a local synagogue. The auditorium was packed with 1,500 people who had come to hear him share the brutality he experienced on the day of the massacre and the 491 days that followed during which he was held hostage in Gaza.
Eli spent most of his captivity deep underground in the darkness of the terrorists’ elaborate tunnel system, where he was chained, tortured, and humiliated. His captors regularly attempted to bribe him by offering a little more food than the 400 calories they allotted him daily if he would read parts of the Qur’an. His New York Times best-selling book, Hostage, recounts his plight in greater detail.
As Eli described the unimaginable abuse he experienced, I considered the many similarities we shared and the main thing that differentiated us: He is Jewish, and I am a Gentile. He and his beautiful family became targets of hatred and bloodlust not because of their character or their actions toward Gazans but because of something they can never change—their Jewish heritage.
The Sharabi family had aided and supported their neighbors in Gaza, yet Hamas did not spare them from violence. Eli said he only learned how much the people of Gaza truly hated Israelis when Hamas operatives kidnapped him on October 7. While the terrorists transferred him from their vehicle to another location in Gaza, many civilians, including children, grabbed him, beat him with their shoes, and shouted, “Allahu Akbar” (“Allah is greater”). Eli saw the assault as clear evidence of a corrupt Gazan educational system that manipulates young minds, indoctrinating them in antisemitism.
That evening at the synagogue, an interviewer asked Eli about his motivation to endure. Eli spoke of his “how” being focused on his “why,” a reference to a quote from famous philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche: “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.” Though Nietzsche was an atheist who denied the Lord, his statement helped Eli remember he had a goal and a purpose big enough to overcome great difficulties. He and the other hostages repeated this quotation to one another daily, reminding themselves of the things that kept them motivated. Eli’s “whys” were coming home to his family and his love for the life God gave him.
At The Friends of Israel Gospel Ministry, our biblical and eternally consequential “whys” keep us focused on our mission too. We have a passion for God’s Word and compassion for His Chosen People. We are propelled by the life-changing truth of the gospel, which we proclaim to those so desperately in need of salvation. We enjoy the Lord’s redemption, which offers both strength for each day by the power of the Holy Spirit and a very real future hope found only in the Messiah. And we anticipate with confidence the day when the Jewish people will turn to Jesus and call Him “Messiah”; and He will reign as a just and perfect King over His Kingdom, making all things right and defeating antisemitic hatred and death itself once and for all.
