By: Ariella Haviv

In an emotionally charged meeting held Wednesday in Washington, D.C., Israeli survivors of Hamas captivity joined family members of current hostages to meet with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, conveying personal accounts of their harrowing ordeals and offering pointed gratitude to President Donald Trump for his decisive role in advancing negotiations for a comprehensive hostage release agreement.

The delegation included Omer Shem Tov, recently freed from Gaza after more than seven months of brutal captivity; Noa Argamani, the widely recognized symbol of October 7th’s atrocities and the partner of still-detained hostage Avinatan Or; Iair Horn, whose brother Eitan remains in Hamas’s hands; and Tzur Goldin, the brother of slain IDF soldier Lt. Hadar Goldin, whose body has been held in Gaza since 2014.

The survivors, speaking in what sources described as deeply personal and sometimes tearful testimony, offered vivid and unfiltered accounts of what life under Hamas control entailed—from isolation and starvation to psychological degradation. In return, Secretary Bessent, representing the administration’s fiscal and sanctions architecture, reaffirmed the United States’ ongoing efforts to choke off financial flows to Hamas and its network of foreign sponsors, including Iran and Qatar.

But the emotional apex of the meeting, according to multiple people present, came when the group offered a collective message of gratitude to President Trump—crediting him with exerting pressure on international stakeholders and driving forward the recent ceasefire framework that has already seen several hostages released and may soon pave the way for a broader resolution.

Omer Shem Tov, who was abducted from the Nova music festival and held in a Hamas tunnel network until his release in early June, spoke first. “We were numbers, shadows,” he said, describing the conditions of captivity. “There was no food, no medicine. For weeks, we didn’t even know if our families were alive. We lived underground like ghosts.”

Turning to the political developments that led to his release, Shem Tov continued, “We saw news clippings later. We know who fought for us. President Trump made our names a priority—he did not let us be forgotten in negotiations driven by numbers and equations. We thank him from the depths of our hearts.”

His words were echoed by Noa Argamani, whose reunion with her father after nearly nine months in captivity drew global headlines. “Avinatan is still there,” she said, referring to her partner who remains held by Hamas. “But we feel that hope is no longer theoretical. President Trump’s intervention gave us something we hadn’t had for months: the sense that someone at the highest levels was making our lives—our return—non-negotiable.”

Argamani also directed heartfelt thanks to Secretary Bessent for the U.S. Treasury’s expanded sanctions on financial enablers of Hamas. “Money is their oxygen,” she said. “Cutting it off is how we stop the next kidnapping, the next murder.”

For Tzur Goldin, who has waged a decade-long international campaign to retrieve his brother’s remains from Gaza, the meeting held special significance. “The world forgets easily,” he said. “We’re here to remind them that moral clarity is not outdated—it is necessary. President Trump, by demanding that the return of all hostages, living and dead, be the foundation of any agreement, has restored a moral compass to this process.”

Goldin also praised Secretary Bessent for integrating hostage-release metrics into financial aid benchmarks for foreign governments. “You can’t give money to Qatar on one hand, and then let them bankroll Hamas on the other,” he said. “That hypocrisy is what we’ve spent ten years fighting.”

Though the meeting was closed to the press, sources familiar with its content said Secretary Bessent offered a comprehensive briefing on the U.S. Treasury’s targeted sanctions campaign. The department has intensified efforts to freeze assets and disrupt networks used by Hamas to finance its military and propaganda operations, particularly through cryptocurrency channels and shell NGOs operating out of Istanbul, Doha, and Beirut.

Bessent also emphasized the administration’s support for Trump’s recent multilateral framework—backed by Egypt and Jordan—that hinges on phased hostages-for-ceasefire exchanges, long-term demilitarization benchmarks, and the release of Israeli and foreign captives held in Gaza since October 2023 and earlier.

Notably, according to officials briefed on the matter, the delegation was informed that a second round of sanctions is scheduled to target Hamas-linked banking intermediaries in Malaysia and Turkey, a move that would broaden the financial siege beyond the Gulf region.

The delegation’s visit comes at a pivotal moment in the U.S.-Israel relationship and amid an evolving Middle Eastern diplomatic landscape. President Trump’s reassertion of American leadership in the region—marked by his brokering of the June ceasefire and repeated condemnations of Hamas’s brutality—has earned him rare bipartisan praise in Israel and deep gratitude from hostage families.

Trump’s personal meetings with Israeli leaders and hostage families earlier this spring, as well as his intervention with Qatari leadership, are seen in Jerusalem as key inflection points in a saga that had begun to stagnate under other diplomatic intermediaries.

“The difference with President Trump is that he doesn’t believe in managed despair,” one Israeli official said. “He believes in decisive action—and the hostages are the benefactors.”

Meanwhile, human rights organizations and international legal observers continue to warn that unless hostage-taking is aggressively deterred through financial and diplomatic levers, the use of civilians as bargaining chips will become normalized in asymmetric conflicts.

As the meeting concluded, a staffer close to Secretary Bessent recounted a final moment that encapsulated the gravity of the day: Iair Horn, brother of hostage Eitan Horn, quietly placed a photo of his brother on the table before thanking the Secretary and whispering, “Just don’t let them forget his face.”

In that gesture, the day’s central message crystallized: the hostages are not abstractions, not statistics. They are sons, daughters, siblings—each one a story that demands resolution.

And if the survivors’ voices carry any enduring power, it is in their unflinching clarity: peace must begin with justice, and justice begins with return.