In Eli Sharabi’s first hours of freedom earlier this year, a social worker led him to a room stocked with shampoo, toothpaste, and soap. In Gaza’s tunnels, he had gone months without bathing; now he could scrub off the grime of captivity. He had sustained himself through his 491 days as a hostage by picturing the moment when he would rush into the arms of his wife and daughters. But the tunnels had sealed him off from the world. Standing in daylight, he learned that Hamas had murdered his loved ones in their home’s safe room on October 7. The social worker hovered as he showered and changed, to protect Sharabi from himself.
Today, the last of the living Israeli hostages were liberated after more than two years—and their release has liberated the Israeli psyche from its fretful obsession with their fate. Having invested themselves so deeply in the hostages’ story, Israelis greeted the moment as an ecstatic conclusion that helps justify the terrible toll of their nation’s longest war.
The hostages’ release is, indeed, an epochal moment, one that may not end the war in Gaza bu
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