Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump’s Mideast envoy, on Sunday described the ceasefire deal he helped broker between Israel and the Hamas terrorist organization as “the most worthy thing I could ever do in my life.”
Speaking alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the official opening of the Altneu Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, Witkoff said, “I have to thank President [Donald] Trump, because without him, I don’t think that we would have had the deal. When he asked me to do this job, he said to me: We got to get these people home.”
He continued: “And he knew—because he had been at my son’s funeral—that I was a member of a very bad club, the club of parents who have buried a child. And I’m always comparing my family and what it went through when I lost my boy, Andrew, and what it must have been like for these families, because they’ve been tortured for 15 months, not knowing what was going to happen to their girls, not knowing if people were going to survive the winter.”
Witkoff’s son died of an opioid overdose at an L.A. rehab facility on Aug. 14, 2011, at the age of 22.
The release of the first seven Israeli hostages since the ceasefire went into effect on Jan. 19 brought Trump to tears, according to Witkoff.
“Today, I was sent a picture of ... [released hostage] Naama Levy ... and she was in the helicopter with her dad and she had a ... little ... sort of blackboard and she wrote on it: ‘Thank you, President Trump.’ And I was with him this morning, and I showed it to him, and he had tears in his eyes,” he told the audience.
Witkoff also thanked his “dear friend” Mossad Director David Barnea, whom he said he had had “some tussles” with in the past, as well as “exceptional person” Ronen Bar, who heads the Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet) and was also involved in the indirect talks in Doha.
“The Qataris were enormously relevant. They were the people who were dialoguing with Hamas. The Egyptians were important. Everybody in the region was important,” he added.
Witkoff announced he would be traveling to Israel on Wednesday to ensure that the deal with Hamas is implemented “in a correct way.”
“Hopefully we’ll get to phase two as well, and we’ll get everybody out who is alive, back to their families, and bodies, because there are many families who are waiting for the bodies of their children. They can’t bury them,” he added. “So we’ve got to get those bodies out too, and that’s just as important.”
In his address, Herzog told Witkoff, “Our sages teach us, ‘Whoever saves one life, it is as if they have saved an entire world.’ You have already saved seven lives from Gaza, and hopefully, six additional hostages will be freed from Gaza this week. This is an opportunity to thank President Trump for his commitment. I wish you great success in your mission to bring peace and stability to our region.”
During the ceremony, the Israeli head of state joined other dignitaries in reciting the Hebrew prayer for the welfare of the State of Israel, as well as a prayer for the safety of the hostages that remain in Hamas captivity.
Sunday night’s ceremony was led by the synagogue’s rabbi, Benjamin Goldschmidt, and was also attended by the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon; Israel’s consul-general in New York, Ofir Akunis, Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) and Jewish community leaders.
