Hamas on Friday published a video of hostage Matan Angrest begging to be set free, in an apparent effort by the terror group to mobilize Israeli public opinion in favor of continuing the ceasefire deal amid an impasse in negotiations.
In the video, the 21-year-old captive IDF soldier, taken from a tank at Nahal Oz during battles there on October 7, 2023, says he has been held for 511 days, indicating it was likely filmed last week.
Angrest, whose family approved the clip for publication, says he’s been told of the impasse in talks and feels that the Israeli government is deserting the hostages. “We’re starting to lose hope,” Angrest says, his voice emotionless throughout the video.
He warns against a return to fighting by the IDF, saying doing so won’t secure freedom for the remaining 59 hostages. Angrest says the only way the hostages will go free is through a continuation of the phased deal to which the sides principally agreed in January.
On Saturday, the first phase of the ceasefire and hostage release deal between Israel and Hamas drew to a close. Talks regarding terms of a poteantial second phase were supposed to have begun on February 3, but Israel has largely refused to engage in them, as phase two requires Israel to fully withdraw from Gaza and agree to a permanent end to the war in exchange for the remaining living hostages.
Instead, it has sought to advance a new proposal for an extension of the first phase through Ramadan and Passover, which ends on April 19. At the beginning of the period, Hamas would release half of the remaining 59 hostages — 24 of whom are believed to be alive — while the second half would be released at the end of the ceasefire, if the sides agree to terms for a permanent end to the war.
Hostage Matan Angrest is seen in a propaganda video published by Hamas on March 7, 2025.
Reflecting on his conditions in captivity in the Hamas propaganda video, Angrest says he hasn’t seen sunlight and has sufferd from the winter cold. He adds that he’s been treated “like a soldier,” and not as a regular hostage, without offering details.
Pleading to US President Donald Trump to secure his release, Angrest says, “You’re the only one who has the power to influence Netanyahu.”
He tells his parents and three siblings that he knows they’re fighting for him and that he can’t wait to hug and see them again.
Angrest closes by calling on the Israeli public to take to the streets in droves in order to protest for the release of the remaining hostages.
In a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Angrest’s family said, “We are shaken by the video we just saw, in which we see our Matan looking drained and desperate after 518 days in Hamas’s tunnels.”
A portrait of hostage Matan Angrest reads, ‘Wait for me to come back, tomorrow I’ll be home,’ painted by graffiti artist Benzi Brofman (Courtesy)
“Beyond the grave psychological state evident in the footage, his right hand is non-functional, his eyes and mouth are asymmetrical, and his nose is broken: according to testimonies from those who have returned, this is all due to interrogations and torture in captivity. What more proof is needed to understand that time has run out?”
The family also appealed to Trump — the latest demonstration that hostages’ families believe the US president, not the Israeli prime minister, is the key to their loved ones’ release — urging him to “continue fighting for our Matan and all 58 other hostages with the same unwavering commitment and relentless determination. We must not stop until the deal is completed — only when the last hostage comes home.”
On Monday the family had published the first photo of Angrest from captivity, from a previous video received from Hamas. That still photo joined an audio recording released several months back, in which Angrest begged Netanyahu to secure his release, in comments likely dictated by his captors.
הקרב על מוצב נחל עוז כפי שמעולם לא נראה, ומעולם לא סופר – כולל תיעוד בלעדי של מתן אנגרסט, השריונר שנחטף מהמוצב ונמצא כבר 514 ימים בשבי חמאס | עובדה בפרויקט מיוחד של @eyalgonen1, מתחילים מיד אחרי החדשות pic.twitter.com/sVPreOqk59
— עובדה (@Uvda_tweet) March 3, 2025
Angrest’s family said he was “undergoing hellish torment, torturous interrogations, and is being held in inhuman conditions.”
The family also lamented that although he was seriously wounded when abducted to Gaza, the soldier was not included in the “humanitarian” category of hostages released in the first stage of the ceasefire agreement, “because he’s an Israeli soldier.”
Israel unveiled the offer to extend the ceasefire’s first stage a week ago, dubbing it the “Witkoff proposal” and saying it had been crafted by US special envoy to the Mideast Steve Witkoff.
Netanyahu’s office indicated it would be willing to hold talks on the terms of a permanent ceasefire in this framework, but the premier has long insisted that he will not accept anything other than Hamas’s complete surrender and exit from Gaza.
Hamas has thus far rejected the “Witkoff proposal” — which the US envoy himself has yet to publicly endorse — insisting that it will only agree to release hostages through the framework that the sides inked in January.
Meanwhile, the US began holding direct talks with Hamas in recent weeks aimed largely at securing the release of five American-Israeli hostages. Those negotiations have yet to bear fruit, leading US President Donald Trump to issue an ultimatum on Wednesday, demanding that the terror group immediately release all hostages or face destruction.
Top Trump aides indicated that they expected movement toward their goal in the coming days.
Trump issued the ultimatum shortly after meeting with a group of eight former hostages in the Oval Office.
The 24 hostages presumed to be alive who are still held by Hamas: Top row, from left: Elkana Bohbot, Matan Angrest, Edan Alexander, Avinatan Or, Yosef-Haim Ohana, Alon Ohel. Second row, from left: Evyatar David, Guy Gilboa-Dalal, Bipin Joshi, Rom Braslavski, Ziv Berman, Gali Berman. Third row, from left: Omri Miran, Eitan Mor, Segev Kalfon, Nimrod Cohen, Maxim Herkin, Eitan Horn. Bottom row, from left: Matan Zangauker, Bar Kupershtein, David Cunio, Ariel Cunio, Tamir Nimrodi, Pinta Nattapong. (Hostages Families Forum)
Reflecting on the experience on Friday, Trump told reporters he was surprised to learn from the released hostages he’d met that not a single one of their Hamas captors treated them with kindness.
“I said, ‘Did you see anybody in there [who] was kind out of the hundreds of people that you were seeing [from] Hamas? Did some of them wink at you and say, ‘Don’t worry, you’re going to be okay, or give you a piece of bread?’ ‘No,’” Trump recalled.
“I said, ‘Were there any people that were kind? I was shocked. The answer was nobody. There was nobody. Just the opposite. They’d be slapped and punched. One man broke his ribs. He couldn’t breathe for a month. It was brutal,” he said, appearing to reference the testimony of recently released hostage Eli Sharabi.
“I was so surprised. Because you think there’d be a couple of people that would be kind, that would say, ‘You’re going to be okay.’ But they had none of that. It’s pretty amazing,” Trump said.
Meanwhile on Friday, a group of more than 50 former Hamas hostages signed onto a letter to Netanyahu calling for Israel to continue with the ceasefire deal so the remaining captives in Gaza can return home.
US President Donald Trump speaks from the Oval Office of the White House in Washington on March 7, 2025. (Jim Watson/AFP)
“We, who were kidnapped during the October 7 massacre, experienced on our flesh the hell from which our loved ones have yet to return. We saw the darkness, heard the horrors, breathed in the fear,” the freed hostages wrote. “We know, and are not [just] imagining, what the hostages left behind are going through. Brutal torture, humiliating hunger, sickness without treatment, abysmal loneliness — that is their reality in these moments.
“Every minute there is hell, every additional moment is a potential death sentence.”
The former captives urged the premier to prioritize the return of the hostages over a resumption of fighting, saying that since the weeklong truce deal in November 2023, “more hostages have been murdered than were rescued in military operations.
“Israel was founded to defend the Jewish people, but on October 7, it failed,” they continued. “The only way to begin atoning for this resounding failure is to bring back all the hostages, the living for rehabilitation and the dead for a proper burial on Israeli soil.”
“This may be the last chance,” the released hostages concluded.
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