October 7th freed Hamas hostage Eli Sharabi speaks to Allison
Planet Normal
Louisa Wells
4.7 • 2.9K Ratings
🗓️ 8 October 2025
⏱️ 65 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In a special episode of Planet Normal co-pilot Pearson brings you a long interview with Eli Sharabi, who after the 7th of October spent 491 days as a captive of Hamas under the tunnels of Gaza.
Eli has recently told his story, in his own words, in his book, Hostage. The book tells the harrowing and deeply moving story of his period of captivity, a scarcely credible tale of man's inhumanity to man.
An awful added chapter of his story is that on his release in February this year he learned that both his daughters and his wife had been murdered on October 7th after he was taken hostage.
It feels an appropriate interview to share on the week we marked two years on from the appalling terror events, and also in the wake of the tragic events of the Manchester synagogue attack.
Watch the full interview: https://youtu.be/zDZ8PH8UIkE |
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Read Allison ‘Two years on from Oct 7, Labour would rather appease its Muslim voters than root out anti-Semitism’: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/07/two-years-on-labour-would-rather-appease-muslim-voters/ |
Read Allison: ‘‘Break my ribs again, just give me food’: Hamas hostage on his desperate plea to captors’
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/10/03/eli-sharabi-hamas-hostage-interview/ |
Read more from Allison: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/a/ak-ao/allison-pearson/ |
Read Liam ‘Rachel Reeves can’t hide behind Trump as she raises taxes again’: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/10/05/rachel-reeves-cant-hide-behind-trump-as-she-raises-taxes-ag/ |
Read more from Liam: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/authors/liam-halligan/ |
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Telegraph. |
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| 0:43.3 | 5 4 3 2 2 1 Three, two, one. |
| 1:00.6 | We have left off. |
| 1:03.2 | Welcome once again to Planet Normal, the Telegraph podcast with me, Alison Pearson. |
| 1:08.0 | Hello. |
| 1:09.0 | And normally with Liam Halligan, co-pilot Halligan, is still lost in |
| 1:13.5 | deepest, darkest central Asia. He's giving economics lecturers to a group of people on a train. |
| 1:20.4 | And to think that we get that for free every week, listeners, isn't it incredible? So the Wi-Fi |
| 1:25.8 | isn't that reliable, but don't fear listeners, |
| 1:28.2 | Liam will be back next week as usual. So this week we decided to bring you a long interview |
| 1:34.4 | I did recently in Israel with the extraordinary Ellie Shirabi. A few weeks ago, I flew to Tel Aviv |
| 1:42.3 | to interview Ellie, who, after the 7th of October massacre |
| 1:47.0 | in his kibbutz on the border of southern Israel, spent 491 days as a captive of Hamas in the |
| 1:55.8 | tunnels under Gaza. When Ali came out in February, he weighed just 44 kilos, which was about the same weight as |
| 2:04.1 | his younger daughter. |
| 2:06.0 | It's an awful sad twist to this saddest of stories that on Ellie's release, he learned that both |
... |
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