How Israeli hostage families rallied Trump to their cause

In one meeting in New York in 2024, Adi Alexander was surprised to realize Trump thought most of the Israeli hostages being held by Hamas were dead. It was a dangerous misconception, he felt, one that could prevent the administration from putting pressure on Israel and Hamas to strike a deal.

Alexander’s 21-year-old son, Edan Alexander, who was raised in New Jersey, was serving in the Israeli military when he was kidnapped on Oct. 7, 2023. Adi Alexander told the president that more than 55 hostages were believed to be alive at the time. “He was actually shocked," Alexander said of Trump’s response.

The administration didn’t respond to a request for comment on the meeting.

That meeting and others that followed with Trump and his close circle before he took office marked a turning point in how the president would view the issue.

It is all part of a major lobbying effort by Israeli and American hostage families to convince the most powerful man in the world to help bring their relatives home. The campaign involved wealthy Jewish donors, a celebrity podcaster, hundreds of volunteers, and countless relatives who have put their lives on hold for full-time advocacy work.

Hostages who were released after a January cease-fire have begun telling their stories of captivity, and many hostage families are taking to the streets to pressure Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to end the war in exchange for the release of the remaining hostages. The fighting, they say, endangers the hostages’ lives.

Yet while Trump has become increasingly vocal about the hostages’ plight, and threatened to “unleash hell" if they aren’t released, he has also supported Netanyahu’s return-to-war strategy. Some families believe Netanyahu will only listen to Trump and he is the best avenue through which to pressure their own government.

Adi Alexander says he remains focused on his advocacy work and has more meetings planned in Washington with U.S. officials later this week. “We keep pushing," he said. “It is uncertain times."

Last month, eight freed hostages shared their stories of captivity in a 40-minute meeting with Trump in the Oval Office.

“I’ve never seen anything like this where you lived under those conditions," Trump told them. “We’ll get ’em out," he promised the group as he shook their hands, according to a video the White House posted on X.

While it was negotiators and mediators who ultimately clinched a cease-fire deal in January that freed 33 Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners, the families’ lobbying effort played an important role, too, said two dozen people involved, including hostage families and staffers and volunteers who work with them.

Now, as Israel has returned to fighting in Gaza, hostage families continue to lobby with increasing urgency to free the remaining 59 hostages, including 24 believed to be alive, through a deal.

To reach Trump, hostage families have turned to celebrities, Jewish donors and others who have the president’s ear. Ben Shapiro, host of one of the country’s most popular podcasts, arranged the meeting between Trump and Adi Alexander’s family.

“Whatever I can do, I’ll do for them," Trump said on Shapiro’s podcast the next day, referring to the meeting. “But I can see the family’s just going through hell. It is very, very sad to see it."

Shapiro said he believed the meetings influenced the way Trump thinks about the issue.

“I think that, when you hear the way President Trump speaks about the hostages and the passion with which he speaks about the hostages, it is pretty clear that that is the case," Shapiro said in an interview.

Desperate hostage families and volunteers began organizing immediately after the Hamas-led attacks in October 2023, when 251 hostages were taken. In the days that followed, they established the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, an advocacy group that represents most hostage families. It has since sent more than 50 delegations to the U.S., where families have met with hundreds of Congress members.

“I don’t think there is a place today in the world that doesn’t know the case of the hostages in Israel. And this had to do a lot with the forum and its activities," said Malki Shem Tov, who helped found the forum and is the father of recently released Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov.

Beginning last summer, hostage families and the forum wrote letters, met in person and took Zoom calls with people close to Trump, including U.S. Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, GOP donor Miriam Adelson, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas), and Trump himself.

Adelson, who donated around $100 million to Trump’s election campaign and whose two children reside in Israel, was key to facilitating access to Trump. In January, she attended a Jewish Republican inauguration event wearing a dress adorned with yellow ribbons, the symbol of the campaign to bring back the hostages, and a released hostage also attended her inauguration cocktail party.

“We talk a lot, almost every other day with Miriam," Adi Alexander said.

The forum set up a Washington lobbying operation with the help of young Israeli volunteers, some of whom later became paid employees, who leveraged all their connections to secure meetings on Capitol Hill and the White House. The Israeli staffers make sure hostage families meet everyone who matters in Washington, said people familiar with the operation.

When Trump took office, organizers changed strategy and shifted to more conservative messaging. They also expanded to Florida, home to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

“The current administration is built around the Florida ecosystem, which is an ecosystem we didn’t spend a lot of time on" before, said Ruby Chen, father of slain U.S.-Israeli hostage Itay Chen. He has stopped working to lobby world leaders for a hostage deal.

Shelly Shem Tov, mother of Omer Shem Tov, met Trump at Mar-a-Lago just before he took office. Freed hostage Noa Argamani, who has met the president several times, and another Israeli hostage relative met with Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump in Miami, said a person familiar with the matter. Argamani also attended a luncheon at the golf club of Witkoff’s son Alex in West Palm Beach in early February, this person said.

Witkoff, a Trump confidant, has given the hostage families his personal phone number and talks to some of them daily.

In one meeting in late January in Israel’s military headquarters, Witkoff told some 20 hostage relatives that the loss of his son, Andrew, from an opioid overdose helped him understand their pain.

Liz Hirsh Naftali, whose great niece was taken by Hamas at age 3 and later released, recalled Witkoff telling the group: “This is the most important thing I have done and will ever do in my life."

Write to Anat Peled at anat.peled@wsj.com