Trump Needs to Save the Hostages from Netanyahu
May 28 marks the 600th day of horror for the 58 remaining Israeli hostages in the hellholes of Gaza. Following the most recent release of a hostage, and in an attempt to envision a way forward, I published an op-ed in US News & World Report on May 19, 2025, titled “Trump Needs to Save the Israeli Hostages from Netanyahu.”
Tragically for the hostages, their families and the people of Israel, nothing has changed since then.
An excerpt from the original op-ed appears below.
You can read the full op-ed on US News & World Report website for free (simply by submitting an e-mail address) here.
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As I write these lines, 21-year-old Israeli American Edan Alexander is enjoying his second week of freedom. He was released following 19 months of captivity after the United States negotiated an agreement directly with Hamas, a move that made the Israeli government extremely uncomfortable. The fact that the U.S. government did so reveals how Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition has alienated itself from the Trump administration. That was only made clearer when President Donald Trump toured the Middle East last week without stopping to visit Israel, the country that has long been considered America’s closest ally in the region.
The Trump administration needs to apply the same pressure it did earlier this year to get a ceasefire deal if we’re going to see more of the hostages come home. But instead, Netanyahu has ordered a massive military operation in Gaza that endangers the lives of the living hostages and the ability to recover the remains of those already murdered. This flies in the face of a new ceasefire deal the Trump administration has proposed to secure their return.
I know how the Alexander family feels in these moments. In mid-February, I was fortunate enough to welcome home my son Sagui Dekel-Chen, who spent nearly 500 days as a captive in the hellish tunnels underneath Gaza. He came home through an agreement with Hamas negotiated through intermediaries – namely Qatar and Egypt – that freed 33 Israeli hostages. Watching Sagui’s reunion with his beautiful wife and three young daughters and the rest of our family has been joyous beyond words. My deepest desire is for the families of the remaining 58 hostages to experience the same peace and closure, whether their loved ones managed to survive more than 18 months of inhuman captivity or were murdered by Hamas and require a dignified burial.
