Mission in Captivity

Winner of the 2026 Bernstein Prize A powerful, firsthand account of a woman’s fifty-day struggle to protect three generations of her family while held hostage by Hamas in Gaza. For fifty days, Dr. Shoshan Haran was held captive alongside her family—including her three-year-old granddaughter—under the constant threat of terrorists and the horror of IDF bombardments. After their release, words began to pour out of her. Mission in Captivity is a story of physical and psychological survival in a place where the threat of death looms over every moment. It is an account of the determination to look pure evil in the eye through long, harrowing conversations with her captors. This firsthand account also documents the ongoing struggle to return all the hostages, describes the depths of entrenched hatred within Gaza, and issues a wake-up call to the free world to act against a murderous ideology that threatens its very existence. Mission in Captivity is a powerful testament, written with a sensitive hand, that will haunt the reader long after the final page.