“We, the families of the hostages, would have wanted to see some calm in the region that would expedite the negotiations,” Ruby Chen, the father of American-Israeli IDF Sgt. Itay Chen, 19, told JNS on Sunday.
“But we’re glad to hear that negotiations are still taking place, according to a contact at the White House,” he added.
Itay, from Netanya, was stationed at the Nahal Oz army base as part of a tank unit when Hamas terrorists captured him along with three other soldiers on Oct. 7.
At one point, he was one of eight hostages with dual American citizenship thought to be still alive in Gaza.
On March 12, the Israel Defense Forces declared him dead in absentia.
His body remains in the Palestinian enclave.
Chen spoke to JNS on his way back to Israel from a trip to New York, Boston and Chicago, where he participated in the Democratic National Convention.
“I think it was positive. We set out to keep the topic of the hostages at the top of the agenda in the United States. It was very successful,” he said.
“Jon and Rachel Polin’s speech was very good and we were all well received by the delegates from across the political spectrum, even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez [D-N.Y.],” Chen added.
On Wednesday night, the parents of American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, during an address to the Democratic National Convention, called for the immediate release of the remaining 109 captives held by Hamas in Gaza.
“This is a political convention. But needing our only son, and all of the cherished hostages, home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue,” said Hersch’s father, Jonathan Polin.
The DNC crowd chanted "Bring them home" as Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, the parents of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli taken hostage on Oct. 7, took the stage in Chicago. https://t.co/2r4Nmz4vqa pic.twitter.com/upKD75L47z
— ABC News (@ABC) August 22, 2024
The appeals come on the backdrop of the latest round of hostage negotiations, which ended without results as the Israeli delegation led by Mossad chief David Barnea returned home from Cairo on Sunday.
Ground down militarily in 10 months of hostilities, Hamas dropped a key demand in early July that any deal contain an Israeli guarantee of a “permanent” ceasefire. However, it still insists that Israel withdraw its forces from two key corridors in Gaza.
Jerusalem, for its part, demands an ongoing Israel Defense Forces presence along the Philadelphi Corridor on Gaza’s border with Egypt. The Netanyahu government also insists on a continued IDF presence along the Netzarim Corridor, a four-mile, east-west road that bisects the Gaza Strip.
Despite the lack of progress in the latest round, the United States responded optimistically, calling the negotiations “constructive.”
U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Washington was working “feverishly” to reach a deal.
Chen believes that the hostage crisis is a quintessential American issue based on fundamental freedom.
“We stand together especially after 9/11, and she was willing to take a picture with me,” Chen said in reference to Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime critic of Israel and a member of the progressive Squad. “We said we will try to find some time to have a more formal meeting. I hope that it will happen. We, New Yorkers, have a special bond.”
Chen noted that he had received a similarly warm welcome from politicians at the Republican National Convention last month in Wisconsin.
There, Orna and Ronen Neutra, parents of Omer, a Hamas captive in Gaza, delivered an address in the presence of presidential candidate Donald Trump and his vice-presidential candidate, J.D. Vance.
“These are critical times,” Chen said Sunday. “Recently, the IDF retrieved the bodies of six additional hostages who were kidnapped alive.
“Each day, more hostages are being killed in captivity,” he added, while urging immediate action.
