Eli Sharabi sees a therapist every week. The other day, he asked her what was wrong with him. ‘I asked if I was f*cked up or something,’ he admits quietly. He knows that no one would blame him if he were in bed crying all day, but, in truth, he doesn’t want to.

For the past two years, Eli, 53, has been one of the faces of the Hamas horror. Terrorists stormed into his home in the Kibbutz Be’eri when he was taken hostage and held underground for most of his 491 days in captivity; starved, beaten up, and kept in shackles. The one thing that had kept him going was the idea of being reunited with his British wife, Lianne, and their teenage daughters, Noiya and Yahel.

It was only when he was finally released as part of the hostage deal in February that he discovered they had all been murdered on the day he was taken into Gaza. He only found this out after Hamas had encouraged him, both during the “rehearsal” for his release and on the day of his release, to express how much he was looking forward to seeing them.

Eli had hoped that perhaps their British passports (the girls were also British citizens) might have saved them. “I was sure the terrorists wouldn’t dare mess around with His Majesty’s subjects,” he says sardonically. But no one had been spared: Jew, Muslim, Israeli, Thai, Bedouin, British, American, young and old – it didn’t matter – they were all killed that day.

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