Ex-hostage Iair Horn begs Trump to bring home ‘seriously ill’ brother Eitan
Thanking US president for ‘decisive action’ that led to his release, Horn recounts being ‘starved, abused’ by captors, reveals he was held with Eitan after they were reunited inside Gaza
Freed hostage Iair Horn penned a message to US President Donald Trump on Thursday, pleading with him to help free his younger brother Eitan, who is still in captivity and not slated for release during the ceasefire’s first stage.
“While my body lies in Ichilov Hospital in Tel Aviv, my heart and soul remain trapped in Gaza,” Horn wrote in a column for Fox News. “As long as my brother Eitan and the other hostages are held captive there, I too remain a hostage.”
Eitan, who is slated for release only in the tentative, second phase of the Gaza ceasefire and hostage deal, is “seriously ill” and is suffering from “severe infections and dangerous fevers,” wrote Horn, who returned to Israel on Saturday after 498 days in Hamas captivity.
“Tragically, Eitan and dozens of others are not included in the current phase of releases that brought me home. Every hour that passes puts their lives at greater risk.”
Horn revealed that he and Eitan had been separated during their first month in captivity, but were reunited and “stayed side by side until the day of my release – a moment that tears at my heart every second of every day.”
“The conditions of our captivity were beyond anything humans should endure. The physical torture was unbearable, especially in those first months,” he said. “But it was the psychological torture that almost broke us – the constant fear that each breath could be our last, that any word or movement could trigger our captors’ violence.”
“We were starved, interrogated, abused,” wrote Horn. “I survived by focusing only on making it through one more day, then another.”
With the return on Thursday of slain captives Oded Lifshitz and Ariel and Kfir Bibas — all members of Horn’s kibbutz, Nir Oz — Horn said that he is “tormented by a single thought: Will my brother Eitan be next? Will more families receive their loved ones in coffins?”
The captives’ remains were returned as part of the current, first phase of the hostage deal, which requires Hamas to return 33 women, children, civilian men over 50, and those deemed “humanitarian cases.”
Along with the body of Lifshitz, and the two young Bibas children, Hamas handed over what it claimed was the body of their mother Shiri Bibas, but was identified in Israel as an unknown Gazan woman.
The second phase of the deal, which would require Israel to withdraw from Gaza, would see Hamas release all remaining living hostages, and in the final stage of the deal, the bodies of the deceased hostages would be returned.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has held off negotiating on the second phase, though talks were supposed to commence on February 3, day 16 of the first phase. The premier’s right-wing flank has threatened to topple the government should it proceed to the second phase.
Netanyahu’s right-wing flank had opposed the first phase as well. Though the deal was outlined since at least May, according to mediators, Netanyahu agreed to it only in January — days before Trump assumed office — reportedly under pressure from the then-incoming US president.
Addressing Trump, Horn wrote: “Though we’ve never met, I will forever owe you my life. History will remember you as the leader who took decisive action when it mattered most, who upheld the sacred value of human life. Everything I do from this point forward will be thanks to your efforts.”
“But there is urgent work still to be done,” wrote Horn. “I beg you to use your influence once again to bring home those who remain. We need your help now more than ever.”
“I promised those I left behind that I would do everything in my power to secure their release,” he added.
“To my brother Eitan: hold on,” said Horn. “Just as you gave me strength during our darkest days together, I will not rest until you and every other hostage return home. As long as hostages remain in Gaza, none of us is truly free.”
Horn, 46, was snatched from his home in Kibbutz Nir Oz on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza. Eitan Horn, 37, who was visiting from Kfar Saba, was also kidnapped.
Sixty-seven of the hostages abducted in the Hamas onslaught remain in Gaza, including the bodies of at least 35 confirmed dead by the IDF. Hamas has so far released 24 hostages — 14 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of three Israeli captives during a ceasefire that began in January.
The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that. Eight hostages have been rescued by troops alive, and the bodies of 40 hostages have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors.
Hamas is also holding two Israeli civilians who entered the Strip in 2014 and 2015, as well as the body of an IDF soldier who was killed in 2014. The body of another IDF soldier, also killed in 2014, was recovered from Gaza in January.
The Times of Israel Community.