Recently freed hostage Eli Sharabi has described being chained, beaten and starved by Hamas terrorists throughout his 16 months of captivity, with the abuse getting worse when his captors perceived Israel to be worsening the conditions of captured Hamas operatives, in a lengthy TV interview broadcast Thursday.

Sharabi said he was “not angry” while talking about losing his wife and two daughters, whom he only learned upon his release were murdered in the October 7, 2023, terror onslaught.

The 53-year-old, who lost 40 percent of his body weight, also recounted close relationships he formed in captivity with now-released Or Levy and Eliya Cohen, with whom he was held for more than a year, and particularly with Alon Ohel, who remains in captivity — as well as a few days he spent with Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino and Almog Sarusi, who were later murdered by their captors.

“You could tell what was happening in the news just by [the captors’] behavior,” Sharabi told the network’s “Uvda” program. And so, he cautioned, the responsibility that lies with leaders, in terms of how they express themselves in the media, is very powerful.

“Every irresponsible statement — we’re the first ones to suffer [the consequences],” he continued. “They come to us and tell us, ‘They aren’t giving our prisoners food — you won’t eat. They’re beating our prisoners — we’ll beat you. They aren’t letting them shower — you won’t get to shower.'”

Over the course of the hour-long interview, which aired Thursday night, Sharabi recounted being held for 52 days in a private home, alongside a Thai hostage. Then, he was taken to a tunnel, he said, where he developed a close relationship with 24-year-old Alon Ohel, with whom he was held alongside two other Israelis in cramped, painful conditions.

“I adopted him from the first minute,” Sharabi said of Ohel. “24/7 together. I know everything about him and his family.”

Sharabi said the men were able to draw strength from one another. But Ohel took it very hard when he learned that Sharabi and the two others, Or Levy and Eliya Cohen, were being released, the returnee said.

When Sharabi was released with Levy on February 8, Ohel grabbed him and refused to let go until their guard tore him away, he recalled, adding there were “moments of hysteria” and that it took about 15 minutes to calm him down.

“It was a very difficult moment,” he said. “He said he was happy for me. I promised him I wouldn’t leave him there. I will fight for him.” Cohen was released two weeks later, leaving Ohel alone.

“I can’t imagine that moment,” said Sharabi of Cohen’s departure. “I can’t imagine it.”

He said he was giving the in-depth interview for the sake of those still captive, to ensure they come home — particularly Ohel. “We cannot leave anyone behind,” he said.

Sharabi recalled one day, when a particularly cruel guard whom the hostages called “the garbage” — they’d invented nicknames for their different captors in order to speak about them without being understood — learned that his home had been destroyed by an Israeli airstrike.

“As it happened, I slept closest to the threshold, so I was the first one to get it. Kicks, punches, to the ribs,” he said, recalling that Ohel managed to shield Sharabi from some of the blows with his body.

Sharabi, who lost over 30 kilograms (66 pounds) in captivity — some 40% of his body weight — and weighed just 44 kg (97 lbs) upon his release, said terrorists held the four hostages in iron chains and sometimes beat or humiliated them, and that they subsisted for months on a single plate of pasta each day.

“If it happens for a day or two, it’s not terrible. But for six months, that’s what we ate, every day.”

He said the hunger pains were unbearable and that getting his captors to give them a dried-out date or a quarter of a piece of bread felt like a victory.

“People should really think when they open a fridge at home, it’s everything. It’s everything to open a fridge,” he said.

“That’s what you dream of every day. You don’t care about the beatings you get, and they beat you, they’re breaking my ribs and I don’t care, give me another half-pita.”

Sharabi described what it was like to receive a pita, saying the four would break it into equal parts, keeping it until 10 p.m. and then eating it bite-by-bite over 10-15 minutes, “so you can get through the night.”

Asked if he ever had fantasies of a rescue operation to save him, Sharabi responded that “in the first period, for the first 52 days, when I was in a house, I could have done it myself,” explaining that he could have taken his captor’s gun at night and shot him — but determined the odds of making it to safety after doing so as near-zero.

He said he constantly imagined some rescue operation during this period, but that “once you’re in a tunnel, you just pray it won’t happen,” explaining: “You know that before they even get to the threshold of the tunnel, you’ll get a bullet in your head. So anyone with thoughts of heroic rescues inside the tunnels — the chance to bring people out of there alive is zero. That’s why people are bound by the legs.”

On November 27, 2023, he was first taken into the tunnel network, from which he did not emerge until his release, he said.

When he was first taken to the tunnels, he spent three days alongside Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Ori Danino and Almog Sarusi, who were murdered by their captors in August 2024, while the IDF operated nearby.

“Hersh told us a sentence that stayed with us, and gave us strength, and didn’t allow us to lose hope — I knew him for two days and he gave me a sentence that stayed with me — he said: ‘When there’s a why, always find the how.'”

When the three young hostages were taken elsewhere, Sharabi said, he and his fellow captives were certain they were set for release. “I told them, you’re on your way home. I remember Ori Danino told me: See you in Israel. We had no idea they were moving them to another tunnel.”

Sharabi was abducted on October 7, 2023, from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri. He said he had no access to the news and only learned after his release that his wife and two daughters were killed in the Hamas-led onslaught.

His brother, Yossi Sharabi, was abducted alive and was killed in captivity, likely inadvertently as the result of an airstrike.

Despite the pain, Eli said that he feels lucky to be alive and fortunate for the time he spent with his wife Lianne, and daughters, Noiya and Yahel, who were Israeli-British nationals.

“I’m not angry,” he said. “I was lucky I had Lianne for 30 years, I was lucky I had those amazing daughters for years.”

Also speaking out has been Israeli-American Keith Siegel, 65, who was released on February 1 after 484 days of captivity.

He attended meetings this week with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf, telling each about his time in captivity and urging the release of those still held in Gaza.

“As far as I’m concerned, the story is not over,” Siegel told Netanyahu, according to the Prime Minister’s Office, recalling the meeting the freed hostage and his wife and daughter had with the prime minister and his wife.

“Although I returned, it is my and your responsibility to return everyone. Our friends are there and it is difficult for me to return, knowing that they are still there. I know that you are doing a lot and continue to show courage and leadership,” Siegel said.

“I am constantly working for the release of the remaining hostages,” responded Netanyahu. “I do not intend to give up on anyone.”

Speaking to Goldknopf, Siegel recalled being moved from place to place no fewer than 33 times over the course of his almost 15 months in captivity, including between two tunnels and two schools.

On October 7, 2023 — when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists invaded southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking 251 hostages, starting the war — Siegel said he was taken from his home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza in his own car, then was transferred to a local vehicle upon crossing the border, and moved to another car again after some time. During this time, his eyes were covered, he said.

“We arrived at a house, and from inside [the house] we went down into a tunnel. They held us in that tunnel for three days. After that, we went out for a period of some two or three weeks, and then they took us down to a tunnel again,” he recalled, of his first weeks in captivity.

The second tunnel “was especially deep — they told us 40 meters (44 yards) beneath the ground,” he said. “We had to walk 15 steps to arrive at the bathrooms, without any air. It was living with shortness of breath, with pain and with pressure in the chest.

“They left us there alone from about 5 p.m. until the next day at 8 a.m. If something were to happen to us there, there was no one to speak to,” recalled Siegel. “The captors “told us: ‘If there’s a problem, come to the stairs, call on us to come.'”

“One night, when they were holding me with my wife” — Aviva Siegel, released in November 2023 during a previous hostage-ceasefire deal — “other hostages who were with us didn’t feel well, they needed medicine,” he said.

“We went over, we called out to them, but no one came, and we gave up. We went back and only the next morning the terrorists came. Leaving that tunnel was a whole other story. Part of the way we went up makeshift stairs, and for another part we climbed to the exit.

“We got out of the tunnel by a miracle, after the three of us were exhausted and dehydrated. We received very little water and food,” he said.

The three-phase ceasefire’s first stage is set to end on Saturday, with 59 hostages — including at least 35 confirmed dead by the military — still in the Strip. The future of the deal is uncertain, and Israeli officials have repeatedly said they are willing to resume fighting, if necessary to remove Hamas from power.

Gadi Mozes, 80, who was freed on January 30 after 482 days of captivity, also urged action to secure the release of those still in Gaza, in a video statement posted by the Haim Forum of hostage families.

“I returned alive; but everyone who is left there, each additional day, we’re raising the chance that they won’t return or that they’ll die,” he said. “I suffered there. I suffered hardships of all kinds, mental and physical abuses.”

“I turn to you, Mr. Prime Minister, every day is critical here,” Mozes said. He went on to thank Israeli soldiers, both the fallen — whose families he acknowledged and said he wanted to “share in the pain” with — and the wounded, “who also risked their lives to save me and my friends and our entire nation.”

Mozes said he was committed to the campaign to secure the release of all those still captive, and also to the rebuilding of Kibbutz Nir Oz.