US President Donald Trump honored freed captives Iair Horn, Keith Siegel and Aviva Siegel during an event in Washington Tuesday, inviting them onstage, where the captives thanked the president for his efforts to bring them home.
“Hamas is just a disaster, their level of hatred,” Trump told the National Republican Congressional Committee, calling the three former hostages “brave souls.”
“These people [the ex-captives] — what they had to go through… is just horrible,” he added, mentioning a group of hostages released from Hamas captivity whom he recently hosted in the Oval Office.
After greeting the trio, Trump gestured them to the podium, leading the crowd in a round of applause as they reached the stage.
“President Trump, you saved my life. You saved the lives of 33 hostages,” Israeli-American Keith Siegel told the president, referring to those freed during the first stage of the ceasefire and hostage release deal that lapsed last month. “You set the hostage crisis at the highest priority. You got 33 of us home alive. We all owe our lives to you.”
He urged Trump to “please continue your tremendous efforts and tremendous actions and tremendous accomplishments. We’ll get, with your help, all of the remaining 59 hostages still in Gaza back home.”
US President Donald Trump listens as freed hostages Keith Siegel, Aviva Siegel and Iair Horn address the National Republican Congressional Committee’s “President’s Dinner,” at the National Building Museum in Washington on April 8, 2025. (Saul Loeb/AFP)
His wife, Aviva Siegel, who was released during a ceasefire in November 2023, thanked Trump for “bringing my Keith home,” saying that while all of their family was delighted by his return, “I am the most happiest.”
“We need you to bring all the hostages home. There are 24 that are alive and 59 to come home to their families, just like I received Keith,” she said, noting that Horn’s brother Eitan is still a hostage in Gaza.
Iair Horn spoke last, saying, “I’ve been in hell for 498 days. I’ve been held in hell with Hamas terrorists.”
“We didn’t see the light but… when we heard President Trump get elected, we knew, we knew, that there’s now someone who makes things happen,” he said.
“We are here because of President Trump,” Horn continued. “It’s really surreal to be here, you know. I’m a simple man, I’m running the bar in the kibbutz, in Nir Oz, where I lived. And now I’m here with President Trump, who is running the world.”
Stressing his gratitude to Trump, Horn asked that he continue helping to push for the release of his brother and the other hostages.
“In a few days we mark Passover… I hope he [Eitan] can sit with us at the Seder of Passover,” Horn added.
The hostages were taken on October 7, 2023, when Hamas led thousands of terrorists in an invasion of southern Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting 251 as hostages to the Gaza Strip.
A weeklong ceasefire in November 2023 saw the release of over 100 hostages, mostly women and children.
In January 2025, another ceasefire began, and during the ensuing weeks, dozens of hostages, alive and dead, were returned in small batches in return for boosted humanitarian aid to Gaza and the release of over 1,000 Palestinian security prisoners held in Israeli jails.
Demonstrators raise placards and chant slogans during an anti-government protest calling for action to secure the release of the hostages from Gaza, in front of the Likud headquarters in Tel Aviv on April 3, 2025. (Jack Guez/AFP)
The sides had agreed to hold talks on a second and third phase of the ceasefire that would include the return of all hostages, end the war, and ensure a complete Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.
However, the truce collapsed after the first stage when Israel refused to enter negotiations on the terms of the subsequent phases, and Hamas refused to extend the first, leading Jerusalem to resume military operations in Gaza.
Fifty-eight of the 251 hostages seized during the Hamas-led October 7, 2023, onslaught remain in the clutches of Gazan terror groups. Hamas is also holding the body of a soldier killed during the 2014 Gaza war, bringing the total number of captives to 59. Of those, only 24 are thought to still be alive.
Images of those held captive in Gaza are displayed at Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, on March 31, 2025. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)
The Hostages and Missing Families Forum published on Monday a medical report detailing the condition of the living hostages in Gaza, based on known medical conditions and injuries, propaganda videos published by Hamas, and testimonies from those released during the recent two-month ceasefire.
The report, which the forum stressed did not provide a full picture of the hostages’ health, examined both their physical and mental state. It warned that some have been isolated for the majority of their 550 days in captivity, increasing the chances of severe psychological distress, and that many of them were likely suffering from digestive problems, prolonged dehydration and serious infections.
The testimonies from hostages released during the recent ceasefire from mid-January to early March reveal proof of “severe shortages of food, water and medical care, leading to malnutrition, severe weakness and the deterioration of their health,” the forum reported.
!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)
{if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function(){n.callMethod?
n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments)};
if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n;n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version=’2.0′;
n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0;
t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];
s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)}(window, document,’script’,
‘https://connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js’);
fbq(‘init’, ‘272776440645465’);
fbq(‘track’, ‘PageView’);
