Hostages’ daughter critiques Biden for not issuing warning about captives like Trump’s ‘all hell to pay’

The daughter of two slain American-Israeli hostages says US President Joe Biden should have issued the kind of statement released last week by President-elect Donald Trump, who warned of “all hell to pay” if captives in the Middle East weren’t immediately released.

“All world leaders should have done on October 8, 2023, what Trump did in his tweet,” Gad Haggai and Judy Weinstein’s daughter Iris tells The Times of Israel.

“Our situation would have been a lot different. We would have saved many lives — not only Israelis, not only hostages’ but also Palestinians — if only world leaders took a stand for the unconditional release of all these hostages,” she says after meeting with US National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in Washington along with relatives of the other remaining seven American-Israeli hostages.

Asked specifically whether her critique of world leaders extended to Biden, Weinstein Haggai responds, “definitely,” in a rare critique of the outgoing president who has repeatedly been heralded by the American hostage families for his efforts to secure their loved ones’ release.

She recognized that Biden has several times throughout the war called for the unconditional release of the hostages, and she expressed appreciation for the president’s decision to visit Israel days after October 7. “But the demand for them to be released ‘or else,’ is what I’m looking for,” says Weinstein Haggai, whose parents’ bodies are both being held in Gaza since they were murdered during the Hamas onslaught.

She clarifies that she doesn’t expect Hamas to immediately comply with such demands, but states they would lead the terror group to understand the international community is not accepting its narrative and that it therefore doesn’t have legitimacy to raise demands in negotiations or refuse to engage in talks at all.

“When these Hamas terrorists… see that world leaders don’t pressure them… it sends a message to them that they can execute six beautiful young people and there are no consequences, that they can release these propaganda videos and nobody’s going to do anything,” Weinstein Haggai says.

While many world leaders have demanded the immediate release of the hostages, they have done so as part of calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, which the hostages’ daughter laments is something they haven’t done when addressing other conflicts.

“It hurts my soul to see what’s happening in Gaza. My family lived a mile from Gaza for a reason. We were the first in line to advocate for peace and for a two-state solution, but the hostages can’t be used to solve the Middle East crisis,” Weinstein Haggai argues.

Regardless, she says it’s “never too late” for world leaders to issue the kind of statement Trump did.