‘Hold those you love close and always be proud Jews’

From the horror and solitude of the tunnel of Gaza to playing out packed stages around the world with standing ovations: there’s an interesting disconnect. But it’s one all of the former hostages seem to take in their stride with surprising ease.

All three who spoke in London over the last few days had different stories but the same message: hold those you love close, appreciate the freedom you have, be proud Jews. It’s a message that Jewish Londoners particularly needed to hear after the last few days. Once we held up their families; now they are here for us in our hour of need.

“I am doing these lectures to empower people,” says Guy, who was taken hostage from the Nova festival, when we catch up after the event. “I want to spread the truth about what happened in Gaza. And we have to fight those who deny what happened there or blame us for it. It is important for me to tell my story because I know it gives other people power.

“It is particularly important for me to speak out and tell the truth because so many say there were no sexual assaults. That’s bull****. I’m the proof.

“What I went through was a very hard experience but because we are like one big family, it was an experience many others felt. So my story has become everyone’s story.

“And what happened to me gave me perspective. I learnt to appreciate everything. Waking up in the morning, I can look at the sky now. I can do whatever I wanted. I can go wherever I want to go. That is the most amazing thing for me. I can do things I love; I can open my computer and learn Japanese. I realise all these things I can do are amazing. Just so amazing.”

Alongside this newfound fame, sits incredible trauma. Guy admits he is still in recovery, relying on rehab for both his body and his mind to function.

“When we were in the tunnels, my mind was going crazy in dreams,” he recalls. “I was doing the best things I could ever have dreamed about with my family. They felt so good and so real and then I would wake up in the worst situation.

“Now, when I go to sleep, I am back in the tunnels. I see the same captors. The feelings are so real, I wake panicked. It happens every night. So it is hard for me; I still get emotional during the day. I am not the person I was before but I am choosing life. I am choosing love.”

The choice to live, to live happily, has helped propel Eli Sharabi, the first of the hostages, to the top of the bestseller list with his memoir, Hostage.

His appearance on stage on Monday night with musician Alon, with whom he was held in captivity, was their first live appearance together. Just how closely entwined their lives remain became clear when Alon started to talk about how devastated he was to learn that Eli’s British wife Lianne and their daughters Noiya and Yahel had been murdered on October 7. But he couldn’t get the words out because he was crying so much. Lianne’s mother came on stage to sit with him and hug him.

Eli, who only found out for certain that his family had been murdered when they weren’t there to greet him on his release, says he has refused to let himself dwell on what he has lost.

“If somebody said to me that crying or being angry or being depressed would give me back my wife and daughters, I would do it,” he says. “But they can’t. I’m a practical person. I know that nothing will bring them back. So I choose life and I look forward. I am rebuilding my life.”

Alon revealed on stage that it was adopting Eli’s attitude towards life that enabled him to survive on his own in the tunnels for more than 200 days after Eli had been freed.

“Every day in the tunnels we told ourselves that we had to choose life, and to be grateful that we were still alive,” he says. “We are still choosing life.”

Eli’s message is one that he wants the Jewish community in Britain to hear too. Living with the threat of antisemitic attacks isn’t the same as being a hostage in a tunnel but, he believes in the magic of positive thinking and wants us to apply it.

“I know it’s a tough time, but I am hopeful for the future and it’s very important to be proud of being Jewish,” he says. ‘Our light is much stronger than their hate. And we have Israel standing for the diaspora as the diaspora has stood for Israel. So don’t hide who you are, and one day things will be better.”