Brisley was a prominent campaigner for Sharabi’s release. Just weeks after the attack, he spoke about Sharabi’s love for Christmas and Sunday roasts.
A photograph of Sharabi seated at the once-empty place was shown this week to an audience at Limmud by lawyers Adam Rose and Adam Wagner, who have represented hostages with British links.
In an emotional moment during a packed session on Tuesday, Rose noted that, during Limmud 2023, he had shown the image of the empty Christmas table, and this year he could share the image of Sharabi finally safe in his seat.
An empty place was set for Sharabi by his brother-in-law in 2023[Missing Credit]
The two lawyers recalled how Richard Ratcliffe, who had campaigned for the release of his wife, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, from Iranian imprisonment, had given them advice.
Rose said Ratcliffe had told them: “The British government and foreign office will only do something if you publicly embarrass them.”
Following this revelation, Brisley delivered a speech in which he claimed that the British government had done little to support British hostages in Gaza.
Less than 24 hours after Brisley made these remarks, David Cameron, then the foreign secretary, announced substantial support for the British families of hostages, including the creation of a support group within the Foreign Office.
“We managed to get the British government to take its responsibility seriously,” Rose said. “We’ve helped set up a structure. The dreadful thing is we know this will happen again. If it’s not Hamas and not Hezbollah, then it will be some other group we’ve not yet heard of.”
He also said that the prime minister had given his “absolute commitment to deepen and widen sanctions against Hamas and organisations around Hamas.” He added that this had also been confirmed by Hamish Falconer, the Middle East minister.
Adam Rose and Adam Wagner at Limmud[Missing Credit]
But Rose and Wagner claimed the government had refused to grant citizenship to the elderly parents of British-Israeli Sharone Lifschitz, in the way that other nations had agreed to.
Instead, a compromise was reached that non-British hostages with links would be treated “as if they were British,” Wagner said.
“Nobody else has access to the Foreign Office like the hostage families got,” he went on. “Once that system was in place, it was good,” he added, pointing to trips that the Foreign Office organised for hostage families to visit Qatar.
Lifschitz, whose parents were taken into captivity on October 7 and whose father, Oded, was killed in Gaza, thanked the pair for their work.
“You were always a few steps in front of us,” she said, crediting the pair with setting up a support system that was the most successful she had seen compared with other European countries.
“Coming from a legal perspective really helps. Our rights as human beings not just Israelis,” Lifschitz said.
