How Israeli hostage families trumped Trump to their case

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Anat Peled, The Wall Street Journal 5 min Read 02 Apr 2025, 05:28 PM IST people protest against government and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and demand the release of all hostages to be kidnapped by Hamas during the attack on October 7, 2023. (Reuters) Summary Miriam Adelson and Ben Shapiro are some of the influential people who helped connect families to the president a few months before President Trump held office, families of Israeli hostages held in Gaza began lobbying. In one meeting in New York in 2024, Adi Alexander was surprised to realize that Trump thought that most of the Israeli hostages held by Hamas had died. It was a dangerous misconception, he felt, which could prevent the administration from putting Israel and Hamas under pressure to bring about an agreement. Alexander’s 21-year-old son, Edan Alexander, who grew up in New Jersey, served on the Israeli army when he was abducted on October 7, 2023. Adi Alexander told the president that there were more than 55 hostages alive at the time. “He was actually shocked,” Alexander said of Trump’s reaction. The administration did not respond to a request for comment on the meeting. That meeting and others who followed Trump and his close circle before he held office was a turning point in how the president would view the matter. It is all part of a great lobby attempt by Israeli and American hostage families to convince the most powerful man in the world to bring their family members home. The campaign has involved wealthy Jewish donors, a celebrity podcaster, hundreds of volunteers and countless family members who have left their lives for full -time advocacy work. Hostage released after a ceasefire in January began to tell their stories of captivity, and many hostage families take the streets to push Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages. The fights, they say, keep the lives of the hostages at risk. But although Trump became more and more speaking of the fate of the hostages and threatened to unleash ‘hell’ if they were not released, he also supported Netanyahu’s return-to-war strategy. Some families believe that Netanyahu will just listen to Trump and that he is the best way to push their own government. Adi Alexander says he remains focused on his advocacy work and later planned more meetings in Washington with US officials. “We keep pushing,” he said. “These are uncertain times.” Last month, eight liberated hostages shared their stories of exile in a 40 -minute meeting with Trump in the Oval Office. “I’ve never seen anything like this where you lived under these circumstances,” Trump told them. “We will take them out,” he promised the group as he shook their hands, according to a video posted by the White House on X. While it was negotiators and mediators who eventually held a ceasefire in January, who freed 33 Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, the families’ effort also played an important role, says two Dozen people involved with hostage families and staff members working with them. While Israel returned to fights in Gaza, hostage families continue with increasing urgency to free the remaining 59 hostages, including 24 who are believed to be alive. To reach Trump, hostage families have turned to celebrities, Jewish donors and others who have the president’s ear. Ben Shapiro, host of one of the country’s most popular podcasts, organized the meeting between Trump and Adi Alexander’s family. “Whatever I can do, I’ll do for them,” Trump said the next day at Shapiro’s podcast and referred to the meeting. “But I can see that the family just goes through hell. It is very, very sad to see it. ‘ Shapiro said he believed that the meetings had influenced the way Trump was thinking about the issue. “I think that when you hear how President Trump talks about the hostages and the passion with which he talks about the hostages, it’s pretty clear that this is the case,” Shapiro said in an interview. Desperate hostage families and volunteers began to organize immediately after the Hamas-led attacks in October 2023, when 251 were taken hostages. In the following days, they set up the hostages and missing families forum, a advocacy group that represents the most hostage families. It has since sent more than 50 delegations to the US, where families have met with hundreds of members of Congress. “I don’t think there is a place in the world today that does not know the case of the hostages in Israel. And it had to do a lot with the forum and its activities,” says Malki Shem Tov, who helped find the forum and the father of the recently released Israeli hostage shem tov. In the beginning of last summer, hostage families and the forum wrote letters, met in person and took zoom calls with people close to Trump, including American Middle East -General Steve Witkoff, GOP -donor Miriam Adelson, sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and Trump himself. Adelson, who donated about $ 100 million to Trump’s election campaign and whose two children live in Israel, was the key to facilitating access to Trump. In January, she attended a Jewish Republican inauguration event with a dress decorated with yellow ribbons, the symbol of the campaign to bring back the hostages, and an exempt hostage also attended her inauguration cocktail party. “We talk to Miriam a lot, almost every other day,” Adi Alexander said. The forum set up a lobby operation in Washington with the help of young Israeli volunteers, some of whom later became paid employees, who used all their connections to secure meetings on Capitol Hill and the White House. The Israeli staff members make sure hostage families all meet in Washington, people who are familiar with the operation said. When Trump held office, the organizers changed the strategy and moved to more conservative messages. They also expanded to Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. “The current administration was built around the Florida ecosystem, which is an ecosystem we did not spend much time on, said Ruby Chen, father of slain US Israeli hostage Itay Chen. He accepted the office. Witkoff, a Trump confusion, gave the hostage families his personal phone number and talked to some of them daily. Liz Hirsh Naphtali, whose great niece was taken by Hamas at the age of 3 and later released, remembered that Witkoff told the group: “This is the most important thing I did and will ever do in my life.” Write to Anat Peled by [email protected] Stuck all the business news, market news, news reports and latest news updates on live currency. Download the Mint News app to get daily market updates. More Topics #Israel-Hamas War #Israel-Palestine War Mint Specials