Nadene Goldfoot
Edan Alexander’s sister Mika describes him as her best friend. Growing up in Tenafly, New Jersey, whenever any of their favorite artists put out a new album, Edan would grab the car keys and take his sister for a drive so they could analyze every song.
A happy-go-lucky guy, a champion swimmer for his high school team, and a big fan of the New York Knicks, Edan spent most of his young life in Tenafly. But he was born in Israel just a few months before his parents moved to the U.S. He spoke Hebrew at home and visited Israel often to see both sets of grandparents. He even celebrated his bar mitzvah there.
His mother, Yael, was surprised when Edan announced his senior year in high school that he wanted to postpone college and try Garin Tzabar, a program founded in 1991 for young Jewish adults who want to explore serving as lone soldiers in Israel’s Defense Forces.
Edan and 16 other American high school graduates, including a classmate in Tenafly, moved to a kibbutz and did four months of training before committing to serve in the IDF. He returned for a visit home in August and expected to return again in April for his brother Roy’s bar mitzvah.
He was on patrol at a kibbutz on the morning of October 7 and called his mother after the Hamas attacks began.
“I told him at the end of the call: ‘Listen to me, Edan. I'm here. I'm with you. I love you. Just protect yourself. Just be safe,’” Yael recalled on AJC’s podcast, People of the Pod. “And that's it, we hang up. I didn't know I'm not gonna hear from him again.” On November 30, 2024, Edan was seen in an undated Hamas propaganda video.
According to the Washington Post, the U.S. proposed a deal to Hamas to release several live Israeli hostages, including dual U.S.-Israeli citizen and IDF soldier Edan Alexander, in exchange for a 2 month ceasefire extension and continued humanitarian aid deliveries to Gaza. This was evidently approached by Steven Charles Witkoff (born March 15, 1957) who is an American billionaire real estate investor, lawyer, and diplomat who serves as the United States Special Envoy to the Middle East.
Edan Alexander's family were known to people in charge who contacted them. They said he'd been in an underground tunnel for over 500 days without exposure to sunlight, shackled in chains for extended periods of time, a Channel 12 news report revealed.
Hamas has not yet responded. U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff warned that if Hamas doesn't release hostages, there could be joint action between Israel and the USA against Hamas.
At the State of the Union speech by Trump, they will join more than a dozen other family members of hostages who have American citizenship, no doubt so impressed by Trump's power to free more or do something positive about it.
The Hamas Rep asked if Witkoff meant the U.S. would join Israel in a military action, and Trump said, “Well, we’re going to find out. Somebody’s going to have to get a lot rougher than they’re getting. It’s a shame.”
The question is that those hostages left might be the bodies of deceased Israelis that are being exchanged for many many live Palestinian criminals in Israel's prison. Is the exchange a fair one? No, it never has been so far.
Resource:
IsraelAM
https://www.ajc.org/news/meet-the-five-american-hostages-still-held-by-hamas
https://forward.com/news/589592/edan-alexander-yael-adi-hostage-israel-hamas-biden-state-union/
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