‘My paradise had turned into hell:’ ex-Gaza hostage releases memoir

Former Israeli hostage Shoshan Haran is releasing a memoir, titled Captive on a Mission, about her experiences in Gaza.

The book, to be released in Hebrew on Jan. 18 by publisher Yediot Achronot, describes for the first time what Haran and six of her family members went through in the Gaza Strip.

The agriculturalist and president of the nonprofit Fair Planet was abducted from her home in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023, along with her daughter, grandchildren (including a 3-year-old girl) and son-in-law Tal Shoham.

The women and children were released after 50 days in captivity on Nov. 26, 2023, while Shoham was released after 505 days in February 2025, in one of the terrorist-hostage swap deals.

“In the battered car into which the terrorists shoved us—bound, terrified and furious—I already understood: My paradise had turned into hell. The idyll into tragedy,” Haran writes in the book, Ynet reported on Thursday.

“But I also knew that inside the inferno awaiting us in captivity, I would do everything possible to bring my loved ones home safely. And in that, I succeeded—with courage, resourcefulness and imagination,” Haran continued.

The publisher describes the memoir as “a story of physical and psychological survival, with death lurking at every moment and in every place, and of determination to look directly at pure evil, revealed through long conversations with the captors.”

It adds, “It is also a document accompanying the struggle to bring home all the hostages, describing the depth of hatred embedded in Gazan society and calling on the free world to awaken and act against a murderous ideology that endangers its very existence.”

Haran is a co-founder of ReHome, which helps rehabilitate survivors of the Oct. 7 attacks, and a member of the advisory body of Hostage Aid, an organization fighting for the release of hostages worldwide, according to Yediot Ahronot.

© JNS