US lawmakers host Israeli officials, families: 'Bring our hostages home'

(TND) — Israeli families of hostages taken over 120 days ago by Hamas terrorists joined American lawmakers and members of the Israeli Knesset, including Speaker Amir Ohana, for a press conference Wednesday at the U.S. Capitol.

“We stand here united across party lines and across countries for one cause, and that cause is to bring our hostages home,” Sen. Joni Ernst, a Republican from Iowa, said.

Hamas took over 230 Israelis and other foreign nationals, including Americans, as hostages when it attacked Israel on Oct. 7, sparking the Gaza war.

Hamas previously released a number of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners held in Israel and a pause in the fighting, but Israeli officials believe 136 hostages remain in Gaza, according to the American Jewish Committee.

Officials also believe that at least 31 of the remaining hostages have died.

“We don’t know if our son is still alive,” the parents of a hostage, a 23-year-old man, said at Wednesday’s news conference.

To understand what they’ve been going through, the parents said you must “close your eyes and to think about your loved ones being in the tunnel, in (the) dark tunnel, without air, without food, without water.”

Ernst said she’s been to the region and witnessed the “brutal impact of Iranian-backed terrorism.”

The Iranian-backed group Hamas thinks “they can barter with innocent lives and use them as human shields,” she said.

“These families live in agony every single day,” Ernst added.

Israel, the U.S., Hamas and other countries are discussing a new cease-fire and hostage-release deal, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Wednesday that “a lot of work” remains to bridge the gap.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, a Florida Democrat, said the families of the hostages have endured mental torture in the days since Oct. 7.

“We will not rest, we will not rest, until your loved ones are returned to you,” she said to the families at the news conference.

Ohana, the speaker of the Israeli legislature, said he came to Washington with a coalition of Israeli lawmakers and hostage families “to show the world and to show America that we are united, unlike what Hamas intended.”

Hamas wanted a breakdown of Israeli society following Oct. 7, he said. But he said the Jewish people have a history of flourishing out of tragedy.

“And I am absolutely sure that this will be the case following Oct. 7, as well,” Ohana said.

Ohana said they’re united in three main goals: the return of all remaining hostages, “total, unmitigated defeat to Hamas,” and stronger relations between America and Israel.

Israel stands for the free world, which Hamas opposes, he said.

Wasserman Schultz said bringing the families forward was important, as it’s easy to “homogenize” the hostages. We must remember that these are all individuals with families suffering back home.

And she called on Arab “neighbors and friends” to leverage their political clout in the region to help secure the release of the hostages.

“My heart has felt like it is encased by lead, and that is the same as every Jewish heart worldwide,” Wasserman Schultz said.

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Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.

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