Adi and Yael Alexander, the parents of hostage Edan Alexander, fear their child will meet the same fate as the six hostages recently killed in Hamas captivity, they said in an opinion piece published by the New York Times on Sunday.
On Saturday evening, the IDF announced that they had discovered bodies while operating in the Gaza Strip. Early on Sunday morning, the military announced that the body’s were of slain captives Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Carmel Gat, Almog Sarusi, Alexander Lobanov, and Ori Danino.
The bodies were found in a Hamas tunnel in Rafah, only days after they had been killed, the IDF said.
Since the discovery of the bodies, and after the Alexander family’s opinion piece was published, Hamas announced that they would begin executing the hostages should the military get near to where they are being held.
Edan, a 20-year-old American citizen, was serving in the IDF when he was abducted by terrorists on October 7. He was one of over 250 to be abducted during Hamas’s rampage through southern Israel, where they killed over 1200 people.
Calls for a hostage-ceasefire deal
While some of the hostages were released as part of a November agreement between the Hamas terror group and Israeli government, Edan was not among them. Many families of the remaining hostages, along with world leaders and released hostages, issued repeated calls for a new deal.
The Alexanders made particular note of the efforts made by Rachel Goldberg and Jon Polin, the parents of Hersh, in securing their son’s release.
“Last month, the world watched as Hersh’s parents, Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg, told the story of their 23-year-old son at the Democratic National Convention. Ms. Goldberg, looking small next to the podium, and Mr. Polin, hunched over the microphone, spoke with emotion and clarity,” they wrote. “With heavy hearts, we rewatched their speech on Sunday, hours after the world learned that the bodies of Hersh and five other hostages were recovered by the Israeli military in Gaza.”
The United States and other parties have attempted to mediate a new deal, but a second deal has yet to come to fruition, as the Alexander family stressed.
“For 331 days, the world has failed our son and his fellow hostages: The Israeli government has abandoned them, too many countries have turned a blind eye, and while we’re grateful for the U.S. government’s steadfast support, its efforts have yet to yield results,” they wrote.
Speaking on the fate of Hersh, and how it prompted further worries for their own son, the Alexanders wrote “The result of Hamas’s cruelty and Israel’s indifference have now come to bear, and two people who have become family to us have paid the ultimate price. Hersh’s brutal killing has us racked with pain for the Goldberg-Polins and fear that our own son Edan will soon meet the same fate.”
Stressing that “[n]one of this had to happen,” the parents noted that every day further in captivity was a day their son and the rest of the remaining hostages were at further risk.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
They went on to take aim at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, blaming him for “fastening the latch” on the “[closing] window to rescue the hostages.” They added Netanyahu was “reportedly prioritizing keeping Israeli forces deployed on the Philadelphi Corridor, a strip of land on the border of Gaza and Egypt, a condition many say threatens the chance to bring home the remaining hostages.”
Over the 11 months their son was gone, the Alexanders said they found “moments of light” in signs of life and the return of other hostages - again mentioning Hersh.
“Just a little over four months ago, Hamas released a video of Hersh, the first proof of life his family has received since his kidnapping from the Nova music festival. He gestured at the camera with an arm blown off during Hamas’s attack that day, his face gaunt,” they recalled. “Despite the shock of his appearance, this video was a sign of hope for the Goldberg-Polins, for our family, and for the families of all those lost in the dungeons of Hamas captivity. Hersh was alive, and other hostages might be, too.
“But on Saturday night, Israeli forces announced that Hamas terrorists had executed Hersh and the five other hostages…Who knows how close Hersh was to coming home alive?”
An anonymous Israeli military official had told Ynet that Hersh and two of the other six hostages killed were to be released in the first wave of the prospective ceasefire-hostage deal.
“We live in agony each day that passes without our son. We have grieved the loss of every hostage, including the Americans Judith Weinstein, Gadi Haggai and Itay Chen, who were killed on Oct. 7 and dragged back to Gaza,” the Alexanders said. “But until yesterday, we hung on to the hope that the other hostages were alive. We knew that hope was not a guarantee. We knew we were closer to losing it every time another round of negotiations failed. As Rachel Goldberg has said: ‘Hope is mandatory.’”
They wrote that while they agreed with Goldberg on hope, their hope was running out.
The Alexanders concluded their piece by demanding that Netanyahu finalize a deal to “bring the hostages home and end all the suffering that this war has caused once and for all.”