Days before the remaining living hostages are expected to be released from more than two years of captivity in Gaza, White House Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump addressed a receptive crowd of hundreds of thousands on Saturday night in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square.

Witkoff and Kushner had been in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, earlier in the week for high-level talks that secured an agreement, which went into effect on Friday, to end the two-year war between Israel and Hamas. They arrived in Israel on Thursday ahead of President Donald Trump’s planned visit to the country on Monday, the day that most living hostages are expected to be released.

“To the hostages themselves,” Witkoff said, “our brothers and sisters, you are coming home.” The White House special envoy praised Trump, who, Witkoff said, “once again proved that bold leadership and moral clarity can reshape history and change the world.” 

“We all owe a debt of deep gratitude to President Trump,” the White House special envoy continued, to cheers and chants thanking Trump, Witkoff and Kushner. Numerous mentions of Trump’s name throughout the evening drew cheers and applause from the crowd.

Witkoff paused his speech and appeared flustered after his mentions of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew widespread jeers from the crowd. “I was in the trenches with the prime minister,” Witkoff said as he tried to mollify the crowd. “Believe me, he was a very important part here.” Netanyahu and Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Ron Dermer, Witkoff added, “have both sacrificed so much for this country and devoted their lives to the service of Israel.” 

Witkoff noted the “tireless dedication of leaders who would not rest until the world saw what could be achieved,” naming the president, Kushner and Arab leaders including Qatari Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani, Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi.

Calling Oct. 7, 2023, a “shattering day,” Kushner said the attacks “shocked me to my core in a way I’ll never be the same. Since then, my heart has not been complete.”

Kushner, who has in recent months been increasingly involved in the White House’s efforts to reach a comprehensive deal to end the Israel-Hamas war, described the “tremendous burden that I felt to see these hostages come home, to see their families get the closure they deserve and to end this nightmare — and also to see the suffering end for the people in Gaza, who, for most of them, were experiencing this through no fault of their own, other than being born into a situation that was horrific.” 

In brief remarks, Ivanka Trump said that “the return of each hostage is not only a moment of homecoming and relief, it’s a triumph of faith, of courage and of our shared humanity.”

Addressing the hostage families, Trump said, “The president wanted me to share, as he has with so many of you personally, that he sees you, he hears you, he stands with you — always. Always.”

A video that played as Kushner, Witkoff and Trump exited the stage praised the U.S. president as “Israel’s great friend.”

Ruby Chen, the father of slain Israeli American hostage Itay Chen, who spoke following Trump, said that Israel Police estimated that 400,000 people were in attendance at Saturday’s rally, a weekly solidarity event since the Oct. 7 attacks. 

Freed hostage Eli Sharabi’s new book, Hostage, ends with him visiting the graves of his wife, Lianne, and his daughters, Noiya and Yahel, for the first time after being released from nearly a year and a half of captivity in Gaza, during which he had hoped they were still alive following the Hamas attack on their home in Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023.

“This here is rock bottom. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it,” Sharabi writes. “Now, life.”

The memoir tells a horrific story of 491 days of violence, deprivation and starvation. 

That final sentence of Sharabi’s memoir — “Now, life” — could sum up his post-captivity self. In an interview with Jewish Insider last month, Sharabi said he was determined to reassert his agency, take action on hostage advocacy and move forward in his life.

Sharabi seemed cheerful speaking about his recovery. He was still slimmer than his pre-captivity self, but no longer as gaunt as he was emerging from the tunnels in Gaza in which Hamas starved him, giving him only a stale pita to eat each day, at most.

“I’m getting stronger every day,” Sharabi said. “I make sure to exercise and have weekly therapy sessions and make sure to take care of myself. I am strong and positive and facing forward.”

Sharabi’s days are filled with meetings around Israel and the world advocating for the remaining hostages to be freed.

“From the moment I got out of Sheba [Medical Center], 10 days after being freed, it has been non-stop action,” he said. “I have a lot of trips abroad, meeting with government officials — presidents, prime ministers, members of parliament, foreign ministers — and a lot of lectures in Israel and around the world, to a lot of Jewish communities. … It’s non-stop, morning to night.” 

In his book, he recounts reassuring hostages Alon Ohel, who is still in Gaza, and Eliya Cohen and Or Levy, who have since been released, that he was sure their families were protesting and advocating for their release.

“It was important for Eliya and me to tell Or and Alon, who were more pessimistic about our chances, to get out and thought ‘maybe they forgot us,’” Sharabi recalled. “Eliya and I were very positive and said we had no doubt our families and good friends are not resting for a moment and doing all they could to free us.”

Sharabi said that when his captors would tell him about protests in the streets of Israel, they would say the demonstrations were against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, but he and his fellow hostages saw it as “the nation going out to fight for us. It gave us hope.”

When Sharabi was released, he saw that the scale of the hostage advocacy movement was beyond what he had imagined.

“When I got out and understood that it was masses of people in Israel, it excited me,” he said. “I met members of Jewish communities in New York, Chicago, Miami, London, Mexico. I meet Israelis and Jews all around the world and understand what they did all this time. It is very touching. I didn’t expect it at all. I expected my friends and family. I didn’t think that people would have posters of me at their holiday table. It’s heartwarming.” 

At home in Israel, however, there have been sharp political divisions about the looming deal to release the hostages in exchange for ending the war in Gaza. Some far-right ministers in Netanyahu’s government oppose President Donald Trump’s plan, which calls to free all 48 remaining hostages — 20 of whom are thought to be alive — within three days, because they call to prioritize defeating Hamas.

“In Israel, everything is political,” Sharabi lamented. “It’s terrible. All of our elected officials, with no exception, are partners in this terrible thing. I think all the people of Israel are sick of everything being political. I think most people in Israel hate this.”

The hostages, Sharabi said, “are not about right and not about left.” His brother, Yossi, was also taken captive and was killed while in Hamas captivity, which the IDF found may have been caused by an IDF airstrike.

Sharabi had an almost paternal relationship with Ohel when Hamas held them captive together in the tunnels under Gaza, and he expressed relief to have seen Ohel in a new hostage video released by the terror group last month.

“He’s amazing,” Sharabi said. “If you told me a week after I met him that he would survive six or seven months alone, after I left him, I would have doubted it. I left him after a very positive process during which he strengthened himself and learned how to survive, that you can’t be nice all the time and can’t be naive. He developed resilience and isn’t shaken by every change and every fear.” 

Sharabi emphasized that, while in captivity, it is crucial to “understand that not everything is in our control, but we have the ability to choose how we respond.” 

“I’m optimistic that soon we will see [Ohel] united with his family, and soon after, I will reunite with him. I am looking forward to it,” he said. 

Sharabi describes his captors in detail in the book. Some were always cruel, while others snuck the hostages extra scraps of food. Some were true extremists, while others appeared to be in Hamas for the money. 

“There are no innocent people in Gaza,” he said, “not civilians and certainly not the people in Hamas. In the 52 days that I was aboveground, not in tunnels but with a family in a house, they made sure people outside would not hear or see me, because they thought people would come in and kill me.”

“I recognize that even within Hamas, after spending 24/7 with them for many months and having different conversations with them, I understand who is ideological and who stumbled into it because Hamas controls the financial faucets in Gaza,” Sharabi added. “Does that make them innocent? Of course not. The moment they got the order, I was shackled around my legs. If they were told to shoot me, they would have shot me. … Some did it for money, not ideology, but they starved me, humiliated me and beat me. It doesn’t make them innocent.”

Sharabi also called on the Western world to recognize that Hamas is part of a broader ideology that threatens them, as well.

“I recently got back from 10 days in Australia,” he recalled. “We flew to Canberra to meet the deputy prime minister and foreign minister, both of whom are, at the very least, not pro-Israel. It was important for me to tell them two things.” 

“First, disagreements with Israeli policy are fine. I, too, as a citizen, don’t always agree with Israeli policy. That’s what’s good about a democracy… We can say our opinions and disagree. But at the same time, even if they don’t think like Israelis and don’t have to care about me as an Israeli, they are part of the Commonwealth, and my wife and daughters were British and murdered in their homes with their British passports in their hands — the Hamas terrorists knew.”

Sharabi said his captors said to him time after time that “after Israelis and Jews, they will get to France, Britain, America and Spain. The whole world will be Islam.”

Second, Sharabi said he speaks out against antisemitism in his meetings with leaders.

“It cannot be that in 2025, Australian Jews are afraid to go out into the streets. It’s 2025, not 1940. That is [the leaders’] responsibility. They are not speaking out clearly enough against antisemitism. I’m not a politician or a diplomat, so I can say that each one of them is responsible. … Every Jew today is affected by the hate crimes in the world, and that is the responsibility of the government and elected officials,” he said.

Sharabi said his constant activity, including writing his memoir, “has a therapeutic side to it, to deal with [the experience] and not leave it all inside.”

“I don’t like to compare it to the Holocaust, but a lot of survivors didn’t talk, not even to their children,” he noted. “My psychologists, from the beginning, said … they never saw such a huge trauma. It’s not just the captivity, but also the huge loss of my wife, daughters and brother. It’s important to talk. It helps me a lot.”

As to why he doesn’t like to make comparisons between Oct. 7 and the Holocaust, when some Israelis have done so, Sharabi said that during the Holocaust, Jews were “a stateless people, a homeless people, with no government to take care of them.”

“There is a lot of anger in Israel in part because there is a country, there is an address that was supposed to take care of us and our security, and it failed,” he added. “It’s not like the Holocaust, so I don’t like the comparison. There were horrors there that we didn’t see here, like the gas chambers; instead there is a murderous terrorist organization.”

At the same time, Sharabi noted that in the months since his release in February, he has not been exposed to a lot of the details and footage of the Oct. 7 attacks, in which his wife and daughters were among the 132 Israelis murdered in his hometown, Kibbutz Be’eri: “I am being protected like a safe. I haven’t turned on the TV; I don’t watch my own interviews.”

“I have trouble grasping it,” he added.

Even without exposure to the horrors of Oct. 7, speaking and writing about his captivity means going back to the darkest moments of his life, repeatedly.

“I am connected to the pain. I recognize it; I have words for it. Not a day goes by that I don’t cry over it. I hear music on the radio in the car that reminds me of the girls,” he said. “But I also remember them with a lot of smiles, and when I cry, it’s about longing for them, not sadness. I am emotional about the good, when I remember my wife and my girls and their smiles.”

“It’s good for me to talk all the time. It’s important to me. I’m freeing it from my system, instead of leaving it inside,” he added.

As Israeli twins Ziv and Gali Berman mark their 28th birthday in captivity on Wednesday — their second since being kidnapped to Gaza from Kibbutz Kfar Aza during the Hamas-led terror attacks of Oct. 7, 2023 — their close-knit group of friends is quietly commemorating the day while continuing their public campaign for the brothers’ release.

Known to their loved ones as inseparable, Ziv and Gali are not only the best of friends but also deeply connected to — and the center of — their childhood circle in Kfar Aza. Ziv, the more quiet and reserved twin, and also the funny one, and Gali, the loud, extroverted and charming one, complement one another and gravitate toward each other, friends say. But testimonies from released hostages suggest that the two have been separated from each other while in captivity.

Their birthday, said Inbar Rosenfeld, a lifelong friend of the twins, “makes us stop for a moment and remember, and get a sense of the time that they haven’t been here — and this is the second birthday [in captivity.]”

“It’s crazy, it’s tough — we never thought we would get to this situation,” Rosenfeld told Jewish Insider on Tuesday.

At the request of the Berman family, their friends have chosen to forgo large public events to mark the occasion this year. Instead, they are flooding social media with messages and appearing in traditional media to amplify the call for the twins’ release. The hope is that, somehow, those efforts will reach Gali and Ziv. “To show they are still with us and we are doing everything for them,” said Rosenfeld. Former hostages have shared that media coverage and visible solidarity gave them strength during captivity.

“We hope they are keeping up their spirits and are still optimistic, and we hope that we are managing to convey to them good energy from what we are doing from afar,” Rosenfeld said.

Nineteen residents of Kfar Aza were kidnapped on Oct. 7. Twelve of them were released in the first hostage deal in November 2023, after which members of the kibbutz launched an ongoing campaign for the return of the remaining seven. Emily Damari — whose house Gali rushed to on Oct. 7 so she wouldn’t be alone — Doron Steinbrecher and Keith Siegel were released in a ceasefire deal at the beginning of the year. Yotam Haim and Alon Shamriz were mistakenly killed by Israeli fire in December 2023. The Berman twins are the last two residents of the kibbutz still held in Gaza.

A message shared by the Berman family on Wednesday said,  “Our beloved Gali and Ziv, how we feared this day would come—a second birthday in hell. You are 28 years old today, though we’re not sure you even know it. We watch videos from past birthdays, from the normal world, and our hearts break. You were surrounded by your closest friends, celebrating in your vibrant neighborhood, drawing everyone to you like magnets. Eating, drinking, being carefree. You have lost your freedom and control over your own lives.”

“We imagine that you have been reunited, that you are embracing each other, encouraging and strengthening one another. We know you don’t understand how you can still be there, or when you will be free again,” it continued. “We promise you this will happen – you will return to the safe embrace of your mother. Hold on just a little longer, survive, and dream of a happy ending. We are calling out: Enough! End this endless war that exacts such a heavy price in hostages and soldiers.”

The  campaign for the hostages from Kfar Aza has included printing T-shirts with the hostages’ names, the distribution of magnets, hats, pins, bracelets and bags, and various events, including a beach footvolley tournament and a second-hand clothing sale organized with celebrities. Rosenfeld, a fitness trainer, has also held special workout sessions dedicated to the hostages.

“There is one goal, to spread and reach each and every person so that they get to know Gali and Zivi,” Rosenfeld explained. “Not just by name and not just by the title of ‘the hostages.’ But so that they really get to know and connect with them.”

Ido Felus, another close friend of the twins from Kfar Aza, said that their second birthday in captivity fills him with a mix of pain and perseverance. “I am sure they are coming back, I have no doubt of that,” Felus told JI.

“Both of them have the best hearts I know,” Felus told JI. “They both love life. They’re different but also very similar. They’re very sociable people, they have so many friends — you could talk to any one and they would tell you about their strong relationship with them because this is the kind of people they are.”

“I can’t believe this is their second birthday in captivity but it gives me more drive to continue to fight so that they can be here.” Felus noted, “We go through so much every day … and they are still stuck in Oct. 7, still in that sense of fear, chaos, probably very hungry.”

Both Felus and Rosenfeld said they try not to get caught up in media reports about hostage negotiations, instead choosing to stay focused on their grassroots advocacy.

“I’ve learned that until they’re here I won’t be calm, so of course I see the reports, but I will believe it when I see the picture of true victory — of both of them hugging their mother, Talia,” Felus said. 

“And until then I will continue full force — we won’t normalize it [their captivity].”

Felus also underscored the importance of support from Jews around the world: “We know we can’t do anything without you … you really give us so much strength until we see Gali and Zivi here at home.”

“And if this somehow reaches Gali and Zivi,” he added, “You know that I love you and we’ll do everything to bring you home.”

Following her return to Israel, Mia Schem — who was kidnapped from the Nova music festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and spent 55 days in Hamas captivity — famously had the phrase “We will dance again” tattooed on her arm. 

On Thursday night, approximately 800 New Yorkers joined Schem in dancing again at the sold-out inaugural Tribe of Nova Foundation benefit held at Sony Hall, a concert venue in Times Square. The event was held with the goal of raising at least $1 million to aid families of victims and survivors of Nova, where 411 festivalgoers, mostly young people, were killed and 44 were taken hostage. 

“In Gaza, I lost my innocence,” Schem told attendees. “I brought back strength and the promise to live life, to help others and to fight with everything I have for the release of all hostages.” The event was held as 58 hostages remain captive in Gaza — about a third of whom are believed to be alive. 

The Tribe of Nova Foundation was founded two weeks after the Oct. 7 attacks by five survivors of the massacre. It quickly drew support from high-profile entertainment and business executives including music manager Scooter Braun and tech entrepreneur Joe Teplow, both of whom attended Thursday’s event. 

Ofir Amir, co-founder of the Tribe of Nova Foundation who was shot in both legs during the attack, told attendees that he went through a long period of rehabilitation and still carries “a life-long injury.” 

“The Tribe of Nova Foundation was born out of an experience that we shared, our mutual values and sensitivity to one another,” he said. “I got my life back, but forever I will carry the memories of the friends I lost and the many beautiful souls we lost that day, our tribe of angels,” said Amir. 

Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) delivered remarks at the event, saying, “Israel cannot tolerate Oct. 7 being ignored because the world’s only Jewish state cannot survive it being repeated. We in the United States, both Jews and non-Jews, have a moral obligation to stand with our ally in ensuring that the Nova massacre is never forgotten and never repeated.”

“Resilience and renewal is encoded in the Jewish DNA … there is no doubt in my mind that the Jewish people will emerge better and stronger, more unified and more resilient than ever before, and that Israel will outlive its enemies: the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Torres continued, drawing applause from the crowd. 

In North America, the foundation is best known for bringing the pop-up Nova Music Festival exhibition to cities including New York City, Miami and Toronto over the past year. The exhibit — an immersive experience that educates about the Oct. 7 attacks — is slated to arrive in Washington, D.C. this summer. 

In Israel, the Tribe of Nova Foundation plans to open a community center to provide services and support by the end of the year, following a $2 million donation from UJA-Federation of New York in February. The UJA New York Nova House, projected to cost nearly $3 million, will provide rehabilitation, sports, cultural activities and workforce development to those directly affected by the attacks, as well as Israel Defense Force soldiers and individuals with special needs, according to the organization. 

Attendees spotted on the dance floor included: Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League; Eli Beer, founder of United Hatzalah of Israel; Josh Kadden, CEO of the Nova Festival Exhibition; former Israeli hostage Andrey Kozlov, who had been working as a security guard at the Nova festival when he was kidnapped; Martin Hoffstein, co-founder of JAJA Spirits and singer-songwriter Jeryko.