Yehuda Kaploun, U.S. President Donald Trump’s nominee to be special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism, hailed the release on Monday of hostage Edan Alexander as a “tremendous and positive step.” The Chabad rabbi also pushed back on recent reporting of daylight between Trump and the Jewish state.
Kaploun described the release of the dual U.S.-Israeli citizen, which Washington negotiated with Hamas via Qatari officials, as a direct result of Trump’s efforts.
“This has been achieved with the support of President Trump,” Kaploun said at an event on Jew-hatred held by the European Jewish Association in Madrid.
“It’s significant that, for the first time, hostages are being returned quietly, without fanfare, without being paraded in front of the world,” Kaploun said. “He’s being brought to the border and handed over—that was extremely important to the president.” (There have been reports that Alexander is to be brought to Qatar to meet Trump, which has drawn criticism for inappropriate fanfare, particularly given the country’s ties to terror groups.)
Steve Witkoff, the U.S. special envoy to the Middle East, said on Sunday that “we wanted to take the hostages home, but Israel doesn’t seem ready to stop the war yet.”
Those remarks led to widespread reporting that Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have very different views about the war in Gaza, which Israel says must dismantle Hamas.
Kaploun said that such reports are misleading.
“There’s been a lot of speculation in the last few days—where does the government stand, where does the president stand,” he said, noting that he was speaking as a friend of the president who has yet to be confirmed by the Senate.
“But I can tell you,” he said. “Those who truly know the president’s agenda aren’t talking, and those who are talking have generally been proven wrong.”
Kaploun said that the deal marks a critical milestone but is “a small step” toward the broader goal of securing the return of all the hostages and ensuring proper burial for the fallen.
He said that key Trump administration advisers, including Witkoff and Adam Boehler, U.S. special envoy for hostage response, have been in direct contact with relatives of hostages.
“From the day he launched his campaign, President Trump made it clear: every hostage must be returned, and terrorism must not be rewarded,” he said. He added that hostages have come up in every meeting.
William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, spoke at the same conference.
The U.S. Departments of Education and Justice are “making it so that these college presidents, the actions that they take have consequences,” he said. “When they take an action which propels these pogromists on campus and supports them, they will be punished.”
“When they take actions like Columbia University did this week, where they arrested 90 people who stormed the library, 60 of whom have already been suspended, then good will accrue to them,” Daroff said. “This sort of action by government will incentivize good behavior, and that’s something we’ve been waiting for.”
