‘Would you rather…?’: Hostages edition

I remember many times that, as a child, I went to play at my best friend’s house and was greeted with the question of the day. “What do you prefer: To die drowned or burned?” For hours, we would discuss with her two younger siblings about the unproductive “what do you prefer” debate, with variations over the years involving different scenarios.

I read on Saturday the news about the release of three Israeli hostages. It is important to mention their names, to know that they are real people with lives and dreams: Ohad Ben Ami, Eli Sharabi, and Or Levy, who were released after 491 days in the hell of the Gaza tunnels. I was transported back to that moment in time in my childhood when we debated impossible dilemmas.

I stop at the news reports of Eli Sharabi. After 15 months of captivity, deprived of everything from his freedom, food, information, and hygiene, his emaciation evokes images of survivors emerging from Nazi concentration camps. His first question upon release was: “Where are they?” He was referring to his wife and two daughters. For over a year, Eli was unaware that, on the very same day, October 7th, while he was kidnapped to Gaza, his family was being murdered in their home by the genocidal beasts of Hamas. Now, he learns what many of us already knew: when his wife and daughters were found lifeless, the three were embracing, in the shelter room where they were brutally executed, simply for being Jewish.

I ran into a photo of Eli with his family in happier days. The four of them, standing before the Kotel, the Western Wall in Jerusalem, which has heard countless prayers from a people apparently chosen for constant suffering. Eli smiles with his wife and two daughters, the same family structure as mine. I have a photo eerily similar, from when we visited Israel. My mind and heart cannot find peace: What if it had been my family? One of his daughters, the youngest, is even named Yael, just like my youngest daughter.

I compare that photo, which could have been taken from one of my family albums, with the current images of Eli’s liberation today. Unrecognizable. Even on the outside, he will never be the same person. The humiliation continued even on the day of his release, where he was paraded on a stage in a public square in Gaza, forced to recite propaganda glorifying Hamas. He expressed how excited he was to reunite with his wife and daughters, all the while Hamas perversely knowing that they had already killed them over a year ago. There, he was informed of the death of his brother Yossi, also kidnapped, whose body Hamas has not returned. The Red Cross also takes part in this cynical circus, further debasing itself by ceremoniously signing an absurd document of hostage release — as if they were executing some important bilateral treaty with a democratic government, when what they are sealing is their shameful confirmation that during this conflict, they limited their role to being glorified Uber drivers.

What do you prefer? To be kidnapped in the tunnels of hell, holding on to the hope of reuniting with your loved ones? Or to finally be freed, only to find out that your entire family was brutally murdered?

As a child, when I joined in asking impossible questions with choiceless choices, I never thought I would live in a world where such a sordid dilemmas as Eli Sharabi’s could come to exist.