When Noa Argamani visited Washington, D.C., in July, just weeks after the 26-year-old was rescued from Hamas captivity in Gaza by Israeli troops, she made a stop at a nondescript office building in Chinatown. 

Inside the Schusterman International Center, which houses several major Jewish organizations, one floor has become the battleground HQ for the small cadre of activists leading advocacy efforts on behalf of the families of the hostages. The smiling faces of the more than 200 people taken hostage by Hamas line the walls, on posters demanding: “Bring her/him home now!” 

Armed with a Sharpie, Argamani walked up to the poster showing a photo of her, an image that by then had become recognizable the world over — along with a gruesome video of her being kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7. “Back home,” she wrote on the poster, and drew a heart.

As attention in Washington shifts to a high-stakes presidential election, a team of advocates, allies and officials is working around-the-clock to keep the plight of the Israeli hostages front and center for the American public. That task is becoming harder every day, as the odds of reaching a cease-fire and hostage-release deal look increasingly bleak, and Americans’ attention turns elsewhere. 

“We sometimes have days where people talk about crowd size on cable news all day long,” Elizabeth Hirsh Naftali, whose 4-year-old great-niece, Abigail Mor Edan, was held hostage by Hamas for seven weeks. “That makes it harder for us to bring up the story of the hostages, and it’s an election year, so there’s a lot of stuff happening.” 

Argamani’s visit to the office, which has become a staging ground for advocacy efforts, offered a rare bright spot, months after the first (and so far only) hostage-release deal. But the victorious message on Argamani’s poster is nestled among many more calling for the return of hostages that are now dead, murdered by Hamas. Their smiling faces, eerily frozen in time, reveal the costs of each day that passes without a resolution to the nearly yearlong hostage crisis.

At the center of the behind-the-scenes Washington advocacy campaign is a young Israeli couple, busy with work and a toddler, who decided soon after the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks that they needed to do something to help, thousands of miles from home. 

No one knew anything at the time. Matan Sivek and his wife, Bar Ben-Yaakov, answered a call from a friend who was starting to work with hostages’ families in New York and asked if they might help with similar work in Washington. They had friends and family members affected by the attacks, but they did not know any of the hostages personally.

“I told Bar, ‘Look, the hostage families, they need help.’ Back then we didn’t even really understand what hostage families are, right? It was very vague, like, most of them didn’t know if their loved ones were hostages or not. Many of them were missing,” said Sivek, the executive director of the Israel National Park Foundations. They could not know at the time that the work that began in a chaotic frenzy in the wake of the deadly attacks would still be needed a year later. 

“When the hostage situation developed, they jumped in. It was very natural and very amazing that they were able, really, from the very beginning, to give just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of their time to help coordinate activity,” said William Daroff, CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations.

The couple moved to the U.S. five years ago for Ben-Yaakov’s job at the Inter-American Development Bank, where she is now Israel’s representative. They were not part of the D.C. political scene; they lacked the kind of Washington connections that may have been useful in helping the hostages meet powerful decision-makers. But that political naivete has become a secret weapon as they dispense with Washington formalities to push a singular message.

The two 33-year-olds sat down with Jewish Insider last week inside their Chinatown office space over breakfast from the Israeli cafe Tatte. They outlined a year spent arranging travel, setting up meetings, teaching the family members how to deal with the media and giving these traumatized Israelis everything they might need to speak publicly about their ordeals. 

“We don’t work in politics. This is really the only thing that we care about,” Ben-Yaakov said. They’ve since studied up on other hostage incidents, and they’ve grown close with Ambassador Roger Carstens, the State Department’s special presidential envoy for hostage affairs. They have a direct connection to the National Security Council at the White House. They’re also navigating the rugged politics of the hostages’ families, who do not all agree on the tactics.

Used to working behind the scenes, Ben-Yaakov and Sivek were hesitant about putting their efforts in the spotlight. But everything changed when six hostages were killed by Hamas in August as the IDF prepared to rescue them.

“We’re rethinking a lot of things. We’re trying to be creative. We’re trying to keep supporting the families in every possible way that we can and every way in which we have to make this effort more visible and to keep this top of mind,” said Ben-Yaakov. “We’ve been trying to be as helpful as we can, while having our jobs, our son, and after almost a year, we understand that this is not going to be over soon. We have to keep making this effort visible and vocal.”

“We keep on working as if we were at the beginning, just to keep it top of mind, always. But we would like to make sure that no one is taking a step back,” said Sivek. 

For some of the hostages’ family members, their main message is to increase pressure on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to make a deal. Others devote their energy to calling for international pressure on Hamas. All of them just want to see their family members come home. The goal shared by Sivek, Ben-Yaakov and a network of partners in Washington ranging from Jewish organizations to the Israeli Embassy to members of Congress is simply to help the hostage family members speak to as many people as possible to remind them about the dire conditions their loved ones face. 

“The thing that’s leading us in how we operate here is to make sure that the families are heard on every large stage,” said Ben-Yaakov. 

The biggest stage for the hostages was at the Republican and Democratic National Conventions this summer. Ronen and Orna Neutra spoke about their son, Omer, at the RNC, and Jon Polin and Rachel Goldberg-Polin spoke about their son, Hersh, at the DNC. Both sets of parents were met with a standing ovation and chants of “Bring them home.” Days after Jon and Rachel’s address, Hersh was killed in a tunnel under Gaza.

“It didn’t prevent the tragedy that we experienced later on. But they really touched the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people,” Sivek said of the Goldberg-Polins’ speech at the DNC, which was kept under wraps until just a couple hours beforehand. Organizers feared a negative reaction from convention attendees. 

“So many people tried to convince us not to go there, not to have families there, because they were concerned about security, about the reactions of different voices,” Ben-Yaakov acknowledged. “It was so powerful.”

While Ben-Yaakov and Sivek may be operating out of sheer force of will, they also have the help of two public relations firms. Helping them with all hostages is BerlinRosen, and working closely with the families of American hostages is SKDK, a prominent Washington public relations firm.

“SKDK came forward and has been working with the American families probably for eight or nine months, or maybe even longer, to work on their marketing and communications efforts and political outreach, issues like booking them on with Jake Tapper on CNN, or coordinating their trips to the Republican and Democratic conventions,” said Daroff. An SKDK staffer told JI the company won’t publicly discuss their work with the hostages’ families until everyone is brought home.

In a meeting at Israeli Ambassador Michael Herzog’s house on Oct. 26, hostages’ relatives and Jewish activists “crafted a framework for what ended up being the strategy to keep the hostages as a top priority in the U.S.,” said an Israeli embassy official. On Capitol Hill, congressional leaders have arranged roundtables for the American hostages’ families to meet with other politicians and to share their stories as widely as possible. For some of them, that includes meeting with the families whenever they come to town after the very first hostage families came to Washington in late October.

“Behind each U.S. citizen being held is a family that has been forced to endure the agony of wondering if they will see their loved one again. I have told their stories on the Senate floor, I have told their stories on cable news and every visitor who comes to my office sees their faces displayed at the entrance. I will continue to tell the stories of our fellow countrymen being held by these terrorists because we need to bring them home now,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA).

Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) pledged to continue meeting with the family members anytime they come to town. “I need to know, firsthand, what they’re thinking and feeling, get updates on their discussions around the negotiations and how I can best support efforts to bring home their loved ones. The families ensure Congress is reminded of the enduring pain this Hamas attack inflicted, and still is, for the hostages themselves, their loved ones, and all the people of Israel,” she said.

The American family members have met with a bipartisan who’s who of policy leaders, including three meetings with President Joe Biden, one meeting with Vice President Kamala Harris, more than 15 meetings with National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, two meetings with House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), one meeting with U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres and dozens of meetings with members of Congress. The Neutras spoke with former President Donald Trump before their appearance at the RNC, although he has not had other meetings with hostage families. 

“We do everything possible to avoid politicization of this topic, and it’s not easy when you head toward an election, especially since the U.S. is very, very polarized,” said Sivek. “The most challenging part is to keep it a priority for all stakeholders. And of course, we’re afraid of the U.S. administration’s frustration, for example, which we can feel, we can sense it, OK, that they’re frustrated. It’s not a secret. We need them.” 

Biden administration officials have in recent weeks telegraphed pessimism about the odds of reaching a deal, even while continuing to advocate for one. “Hamas did change some of the terms of the exchange, and that has made it more difficult for us to get there,” White House national security spokesperson John Kirby said last week. “It’s still worth an effort to try to see if we can’t get back into a cease-fire negotiation. But we’re not there right now.” On Wednesday, he said no progress had been made over the previous week. 

Six family members of American hostages addressed the media at the National Press Club in Washington on Wednesday morning, speaking with a mix of anger, sadness and resignation about the status of hostage deal negotiations. Although they expressed gratitude for the Biden administration’s efforts at making a deal, some of the family members made clear they are frustrated by the lack of progress.

“I know that the whole world is looking at what’s happening in the United States, and I know that the whole world is waiting for the United States to be much stronger,” said Aviva Siegel, who was taken hostage with her husband, Keith. Aviva was freed in November while Keith remains captive in Gaza.

“My expectations for this visit are a bit low, where we do not foresee a breakthrough in the current dialogue between the parties to reach a deal to release all of the hostages,” said Ruby Chen, the father of Itay Chen, who was killed on Oct. 7 and whose body is being held in Gaza. “I call on the Biden administration to reevaluate its basic assumptions, how to reach a deal for the American seven.” A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

As the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7 approaches, those speaking out on behalf of the hostages say their message is simple: Bring them home.

“The message is still, ‘We need to get these hostages home.’ The message just gets more urgent, as we see them being killed and dying in captivity,” said Naftali, the great-aunt of Abigail Edan. “We have to keep at it, because there’s no other option.” 

For Sivek and Ben-Yaakov, the work of juggling two jobs, hostage advocacy efforts and raising a son is an impossible calculation that always demands more than the 24 hours in any given day. 

“If I would start to digest and process what’s happening, I feel that I will be dysfunctional in a way, because it’s just … the amount of suffering and pain,” said Sivek. 

Not everyone can devote huge amounts of time to the work, but Sivek and Ben-Yaakov and the many others working on behalf of the hostages want any potential advocates to know that doing something, no matter how small, counts. They can post on social media, or call their members of Congress. They can host weekly meetings in their community.

“Make sure that people don’t forget. Bring the community together. They need it. They need it,” said Sivek. “They need it for their souls.”