Nearly three years after the Hamas-led terrorist attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Ruby Chen, father of slain hostage Itay Chen, said Americans have not reckoned with the number of their fellow citizens murdered during the attack and ensuing war.
“Most people in the United States are not aware of the fact that over 45 U.S. citizens were killed,” Chen told JNS. “Moms, dads, grandparents, kids ages four and six.”
“Dozens of U.S. citizens were killed and dozens more injured,” he said. “Somehow that has been lost.”
Chen, whose son was a U.S. citizen, is urging Congress to consider an investigative body focused on the American victims, as well as support for their families. He also wants Israel to establish a state commission of inquiry into the failures that made the massacre possible.
“The question is not what happened. We know what happened,” he said. “The question is how did it happen, and how do we prevent this from happening again?”
He said accountability has been elusive because “when everybody’s to blame, nobody’s to blame, and life goes on.”
Chen also worries about the durability of U.S.-Israel ties. He praised U.S. President Donald Trump and former U.S. President Joe Biden, but faulted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for allowing Israel to become identified too closely with the Republican Party.
“The next president, and it doesn’t matter if it’s Republican or Democrat, we’re going to be in a whole different ball game,” Chen said. “The question is, who’s thinking about that and who’s preparing for that?”
“With what’s happening inside of the Democratic Party, nobody is thinking about it or has a plan, not the Jewish organizations,” he told JNS, adding that he’s concerned that Jews in the United States may not thrive “when you have a growing majority of people that have negative feelings towards us.”
Chen said the state of Israel “has not built bridges to larger portions of the United States public” and “that’s coming back to bite us.”
With elections coming up in both the United States and Israel, Chen hopes that voters will consider Oct. 7. “Then maybe some plans could be put in motion,” he said.
‘He didn’t intend to be a hero’
Chen, 58, who grew up in Flatbush, N.Y., told JNS that Itay, who was 19 when he was killed by Hamas, loved basketball, looked after his friends and was a Boston Celtics fan.
“For the love of God, how did he become a Boston Celtics fan?” Chen said, noting that his son’s admiration for Kyrie Irving pulled him away from the family’s allegiance to the New York Knicks.
Itay, the middle of three sons, served as a counselor in the Israeli Scouts and was quick to use the family car to help a friend. Chen said young people from Itay’s different social circles who visited the family to offer condolences and share stories described him as their best friend.
“He thought a lot about the future,” Chen said. “He had a loving girlfriend.”
A U.S.-Israel-German citizen—he held German citizenship through his mother—Itay chose to stay in Israel when he turned 18, instead of going away for college, and draft into the Israel Defense Forces. “My family are Holocaust survivors on both sides,” Chen told JNS. “He felt compelled to protect the Jewish state.”
On Oct. 7, 2023, Itay was stationed at a base near the Gaza border. “They got ambushed,” Chen told JNS. “We still do not have answers about how this happened. They fought, they killed a lot of bad people that were looking to kill Jewish people just because they were Jewish.”
“He was missing in action for a number of days,” he said. “We had no idea what was going on, but after a couple of days we were notified he was officially missing in action, and it took them another two weeks to say, ‘He’s in Gaza.’”
There was no evidence of Itay’s physical status, Chen said. “The intelligence said, take what you can positive, which is we don’t have anything negative to say about his physical status, so think positive.”
“We thought positive, and that positivity took us on a journey to Washington, D.C., to Germany, Qatar and other places,” he said.
In March 2024, the family was informed that Itay likely had not survived. “We said we weren’t doing a shiva because he’s not here,” Chen told JNS. “That’s what I said to President Biden when he called me, and to Vice President Harris.”
Chen said he told Netanyahu—whose brother Yonatan Netanyahu was an IDF soldier killed in 1976 during the mission to rescue hostages in Entebbe—that the Netanyahu family had a shiva and “had a place to go to every year, and that’s our expectation, as well.”
“Go finish the job and bring them back,” he said to the Israeli prime minister. Itay, whose remains were returned to Israel in November 2025, was the last U.S. citizen to be brought back from Gaza.
Chen told JNS that while the family did not want to establish any memorials until Itay was brought back to Israel, they have since renovated a local basketball court in their hometown of Netanya in his name.
“When someone young is killed, we weep for the life that was lost, that was not lived,” Chen said.
He told JNS that when then-U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called to provide his condolences, Blinken said, “When someone dies at such a young age, we should cherish and remember what he was able to accomplish, and look, so many people know about Itay, from the president downwards in the White House to Congress.”
“You should take solace in that fact,” Blinken told Chen. “Know that Itay’s life was known to many people and it should be celebrated.”
“He didn’t intend to be a hero,” Chen said of his son. “When you are a hero, that means that somebody put you in a position that you needed to be one, but it also means that somebody messed up big time.”
“We are still waiting to understand and identify who those people were that the public should know about,” he said.
