Former hostage Eli Sharabi’s memoir of his time in Hamas captivity is sure to be read widely upon tomorrow’s release of its English translation. Michael M. Rosen’s excellent review in September’s COMMENTARY astutely appraises its importance and its lessons for Israel and the Jewish world.

The timing of the book’s release, to coincide with the second anniversary of the Hamas attacks, also provides a moment to reflect on the massive failure of the international community and the liberal world order, a failure that is likely to continue even after the war is over.

One part of the book highlights this more than any other: when the hostages begin to starve.

At one point in his captivity, Sharabi and his fellow captives are moved to a new tunnel and their food rations practically disappear. “For the first three days in this tunnel, we eat nothing but biscuits. Two or three in the morning. Two or three at night. Biscuits and water. That’s it.

“After three days, they bring us some raw ful beans. I start feeling weak. My body needs real food. I think it takes them nearly two weeks to get pitas into the tunnel. They’re stale, probably foraged from the street. I don’t care. I savor the single pita bread I’m given and devour it slowly. Besides the pitas, they give us a can of cream cheese. I break my pita into pieces, dip each one into the cheese, and chew slowly. I save the last morsel for the end of the day, just to fall asleep with something in my stomach.”

Sometimes the Hamas captors would cook sweets for themselves right in front of the captives, but Sharabi acknowledges that there were likely shortages of supplies all around Gaza, and that Hamas isn’t exactly feasting. But as punishment, the captives’ meager rations are soon reduced and then reduced again:

“As the days go by, we begin to notice malnutrition taking its toll. Looking at each other, we start to see the extreme thinness, the gaunt faces, the flesh wasting away. I feel my body weakening, sense the dizziness, see my belly caving inward. The single meal we get each day has no set time. One day it might come at 13:00, the next day suddenly at 15:00, another day at noon. We live with zero certainty as to when the next meal will arrive. The meal consists of either one and a half dry pitas per person, or a tray of flavorless pasta, or a tray of rice. Besides the pita rations, sometimes we also get a can of cheese or fava beans.”

Soon they are moved again, however, and the brief trip outside is revelatory: “The streets are full of people. Stores are open. Some selling groceries, others meat. I can smell food being cooked, being fried, and I’m desperate for a bite.”

Another captive, Elia, notes that kids were walking around with iPhones and the stores are open and Gazans are out and about. In the new tunnel, the hostages’ maltreatment only worsens, and the taunting increases. No doubt all of this is made more bitter by the discovery that the hostages weren’t starving because Hamas was starving; the hostages were starving because Hamas wanted them to starve.

This is only reinforced when UN aid boxes start arriving: “Big white crates brimming with food. Our captors eat and are merry, leaving us with a few miserable crumbs from the whole feast, but hey, we’re still happy these boxes are here. First of all, it’s good that there’s food. When there’s food, there’s something to ask for, something to beg for, and you might even get something. And when our captors have food, when they feel full, they are more satisfied and less disgruntled, and that makes them more amicable and less irritable. So supplies are a good thing.”

Yet again, here is the travesty of the modern UN in all its sliminess. The resumption of aid, and the UN’s collaboration with Hamas to dole it out, fed everyone but the Jews kept in Gaza’s dungeons. That’s not what the public were told—the narrative repeated ad nauseam was that the hostages will starve because Gazans were starving. It was all a lie.

And what kind of effort did the UN make to get its food to the hostages? What kinds of requests or demands did they make as a condition of resuming their lifeline to Hamas? Did the starving hostages ever once cross the mind of a single UN staffer? Crates of UN food got within a few feet of the hostages, of course. But they only got that close so Hamas could fatten up in front of emaciated captives.

And where was the Red Cross? Ceasefires came and went, but the hostages’ isolation remained constant. The entire Mideast NGO world exists to feed terrorists and starve Jews, and there is no pushback from within.

Speaking of the Red Cross: when Sharabi and some fellow hostages are finally ransomed, they are sitting in a Red Cross car and told they are safe and sound. Another hostage, Ohad, seems unmoved. “Where were you?” Ohad asks the Red Cross staffer, Felicity. She ignores him. “For a year and four months, we didn’t see you. We didn’t hear from you. You didn’t take care of us. You never visited. Where were you?” Felicity finally and weakly says, “They didn’t let us reach you.”

That these incidents are not the center of a media storm further remind us that there is no international institution dedicated to ensuring that Jews are provided the same rights under “international law” as others. And so the lesson on this October 7 remains that Israel must do whatever it needs to do to prevent another October 7, because no one else ever will.