Over 50 ex-hostages tell Netanyahu to free the remaining captives: ‘May be the last chance’

A group of more than 50 former Hamas hostages sign a letter to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu calling for Israel to continue with the ceasefire deal so the remaining captives in Gaza will return home.

“We, who were kidnapped during the October 7 massacre, experienced on our flesh the hell from which our loved ones have yet to return. We saw the darkness, heard the horrors, breathed in the fear,” the freed hostages write. “We know and are not [just] describing what the hostages left behind are going through. Brutal torture, humiliating hunger, sickness without treatment, abysmal loneliness — that is their reality in these moments.”

“Every minute there is hell, every additional moment is a potential death sentence.”

The former captives urge the premier to prioritize the return of the hostages over a resumption of the fighting, saying that since the weeklong truce deal in November 2023 “more hostages have been murdered than were rescued in military operations.”

“Israel was founded to defend the Jewish people, but on October 7 it failed,” they continue. “The only way to begin atoning for this resounding failure is to bring back all the hostages, the living for rehabilitation and the dead for a proper burial in the soil of Israel.”

“This may be the last chance,” the released hostages conclude.