Sharon Sharabi, the brother of former hostage Eli Sharabi and slain hostage Yossi Sharabi, entered politics on Monday, joining Avigdor Liberman’s right-wing opposition party, Yisrael Beytenu.
Sharabi first entered the public eye as a prominent advocate for the release of the hostages abducted to Gaza during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, attack. Among the 251 hostages snatched from dozens of communities across southern Israel were his brothers Eli and Yossi, who were abducted from their homes in Kibbutz Be’eri.
Yossi was killed in captivity in January 2024, likely as an inadvertent result of an Israeli airstrike, while Eli was released in February 2025. Upon his release, Eli discovered that his wife Lianne and their teen daughters, Noiya and Yahel, had been killed on October 7.
Sharabi “has emerged as one of the most prominent, responsible, and unifying voices in Israeli society,” Yisrael Beytenu said of his entry to the party ahead of this year’s elections, which must be held no later than October 27. “Amidst his painful personal and family story, he worked for the return of the hostages, with sensitivity and determination — and touched the hearts of many Israelis from all corners of society.”
Sharabi, who is religiously observant, said he was joining Yisrael Beytenu despite its staunchly secular character out of a “deep responsibility toward Israeli society as a whole.”
As a member of the Religious Zionist community and a resident of the West Bank settlement of Alfei Menashe, Sharabi said he would work to “strengthen Jewish settlement, security and solidarity in Israeli society.”
Liberman, welcoming him to the party, said Sharabi brought experience in “civic leadership” through unity with him, and would represent “values of responsibility, mutual solidarity and strengthening Israeli society’s resilience.”
Noting his past support for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party, Sharabi painted his decision to join the party as a result of Israel’s shifting political ground, rather than a change in his own ideology.
Likud, he said, had abandoned its traditional “national, statesmanlike and security-focused” values.
“Today, ‘the Likud of the past’ is Yisrael Beytenu,” Sharabi said, calling Liberman “a true right-wing leader,” and the only one who didn’t buy into the pre-October 7 belief among the country’s leadership that Hamas was deterred.
While serving as defense minister under Netanyahu in 2016, Liberman drafted an 11-page document warning that Hamas planned to burst through the Gaza border, overrun communities in southern Israel, and take hostages.
The document was presented to Netanyahu and then-IDF chief of staff Gadi Eisenkot with a call to launch a preemptive attack on Hamas to thwart its plans.
No such action was ever taken, and excerpts from the document were published by Hebrew news outlets in the weeks following the October 7 massacre.
Liberman has since claimed that his push to assassinate Hamas leaders was repeatedly overruled by Netanyahu.
The hawkish Soviet-born leader resigned as defense minister in 2018 — bringing down Netanyahu’s government and inadvertently sparking a years-long political crisis — due to his opposition to a ceasefire reached in the wake of an unprecedentedly fierce two-day barrage of over 400 rockets fired by Hamas and other terror groups at Israel.
Sharabi is the second relative of former hostages to publicly announce political ambitions, after Danny Elgarat joined the left-wing Democrats earlier this year, in anticipation of the party’s open primaries.
Source:
www.timesofisrael.com
