Recently freed hostage Eli Sharabi met on Friday morning with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer at 10 Downing Street, as he continued his international campaign on behalf of the remaining captives, just weeks after his emaciated state upon his release from a Hamas tunnel shocked Israelis and those abroad.
According to a statement from the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, the British premier vowed during the meeting to “redouble” his efforts on behalf of the remaining 59 hostages.
Sharabi was released from captivity on February 8, and only then learned that his wife Lianne and their daughters, Noiya, 16, and Yahel, 13, were murdered by Palestinian terrorists in their home’s safe room at Kibbutz Be’eri, while he and his elder brother Yossi were taken captive. The IDF said last month that Yossi was likely accidentally killed in an IDF strike in Gaza. His body is still being held by Hamas terrorists.
Lianne was a British citizen.
Despite having lost roughly 66 pounds during his horrific captivity, Sharabi has quickly joined the campaign for the release of the remaining hostages, giving a harrowing interview with Channel 12’s “Uvda” investigative program late last month about his time in Hamas’s Gaza tunnels.
Translated clips of the interview were shared with US President Donald Trump who Sharabi’s brother Sharon said invited the former hostage to the White House.
Starmer told Sharabi on Friday that he also had read transcripts of the “Uvda” interview and that it had “moved him deeply,” according to the Hostages Families Forum statement.
The interview was widely shared in Israel, but Likud Economy Minister Nir Barkat said last week that he hadn’t watched it because he had “more important things” to do, sparking immediate outcry and an eventual apology by the Netanyahu loyalist.
“Inhuman is a word that is used too often, but your experience warranted that word,” Starmer was quoted as having told Sharabi.
Starmer also afterward posted on X a call for the “full implementation of the remaining phases of the ceasefire and reuniting the remaining hostages with their loved ones.”
This stance appeared to put Starmer out of step with Israel, which has largely abandoned the phased framework it signed in January due to phase two’s requirements for Israel to withdraw fully from Gaza and agree to permanently end the war.
Israel and Hamas were supposed to begin holding negotiations regarding the terms of phase two on February 3, but Israel largely refrained from doing so. The Trump administration has backed Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s stance and has been increasingly calling for Hamas to be completely eradicated — a goal that ostensibly would be complicated by the existing deal’s terms aimed at freeing the remaining hostages. Accordingly, Israel is trying to have the deal reworked and is pushing a new framework for future hostage releases, though Hamas has thus far rejected the proposal.
Sharabi was joined by seven other released hostages who met with Trump on Wednesday in the Oval Office.
During that meeting, Sharabi gifted Trump a framed copy of a cartoon published in the Times of London showing a picture of Holocaust survivors at a Nazi concentration camp with the caption “Never again,” beside an illustration from his own release last month and the caption “Again.”
Sharabi gifted that same picture to Starmer along with a letter during their Friday meeting.
“Eli Sharabi endured an unimaginable ordeal in Hamas captivity, he has shown phenomenal courage and bravery,” Starmer tweeted after the meeting. “The loss of his wife, Lianne, daughters Noiya and Yahel, and brother Yossi is unthinkable.”
Sharabi, who is not a British citizen, thanked Starmer during their meeting “for the UK taking responsibility for him as a hostage with close British connections, and for working toward his release for over a year,” said the Israeli statement.
It added that Sharabi asked the British leader to continue working for the release of the remaining 59 hostages, alive and dead, including his brother.
Starmer heard firsthand from Sharabi about the horrific conditions in which he was held for nearly 500 days by the terrorist organization Hamas, during which he was beaten and starved, the Israeli statement said. “Eli stated, ‘I never lost hope of returning home.’”