World
‘Hamas eats like kings while hostages starve,’ Eli Sharabi tells UN
The freed hostage addressed the UN Security Council
March 21, 2025 11:08
By, In New York
2 min read
The freed hostage addressed the UN Security Council
March 21, 2025 11:08ByVita Fellig, In New York
Eli Sharabi, 53, a former hostage held by Hamas in Gaza, told the United Nations Security Council on Thursday that the terror group exploits aid from the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees for its own enrichment.
“I saw Hamas terrorists carrying boxes with the UN and Unrwa emblems on them into the tunnel,” Sharabi told the global body. “Dozens and dozens of boxes, paid by your government, feeding terrorists who tortured me and murdered my family.”
“They would eat many meals a day from the UN aid in front of us, and we never received any of it,” he testified. “When you speak of humanitarian aid, remember this. Hamas eats like kings while hostages starve.”
Hamas terrorists beat hostages in captivity, according to Sharabi.
“I have come back from hell,” he said. “I have returned to tell my story. For 491 days, I was kept underground in Hamas terror tunnels, chained, starved, beaten and humiliated.”
“The chains they kept me in tore into my skin from the moment I entered until the moment I was released,” he told the Security Council. “I was treated worse than an animal. I had to beg for food, beg to use the bathroom.”
“Begging became my existence,” he said.
Sharabi lost more than 66 pounds in captivity in Gaza and weighed just 97 pounds upon his release on Feb. 8. His wife, Lianne, and their daughters, Yahel and Noiya, were murdered in Kibbutz Be’eri during the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Danny Danon, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, criticised the international organisation for enabling the Gazan terror group’s abuse of international aid.
“The cruelty here is not just from Hamas,” he told the Security Council. “It is also from the silence of the world. Since Oct. 7, you have passed 77 resolutions in this room. Yet you have not passed a single resolution condemning Hamas.”
“For 530 days, you have erased the hostages and you have spoken about Gaza without mentioning the crimes of Hamas,” he said. “You have debated humanitarian assistance without acknowledging the humanitarian catastrophe Hamas is deliberately inflicting on the hostages.”
Danon told the Security Council cannot that “no one can dispute the testimony of a hostage survivor, who saw with his own eyes Hamas benefiting from UN humanitarian aid.”
Eli Sharabi speaks to the media at the United Nations on March 20, 2025. Credit: Perry Bindelglass.
“You can no longer turn a blind eye,” he said. “Unrwa supports Hamas’s murderous terror enterprise that is starving our hostages and perpetuating the humanitarian disaster in Gaza.”
Dorothy Shea, acting U.S. representative to the United Nations, said at the Security Council meeting that the Trump administration will continue to pressure Hamas to release the remaining 59 hostages being held in Gaza.
“It is important for the council to hear directly from hostages who were kept in Hamas captivity,” she said. “They are witnesses and they are survivors, whose testimony provides evidence of the barbarity of Hamas.”
“President Trump has been clear that Hamas must release all 59 hostages immediately—including American citizens Edan Alexander, Itay Chen, Judith Weinstein, Gad Haggai and Omer Neutra—or pay a steep price,” she said.