Dad of captive urges bipartisan support in US

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“We, the families of the hostages, would have wanted to see some calm in the region that would expedite the negotiations — but we’re glad to hear that negotiations are still taking place.”

That’s what Ruby Chen, father of American-Israeli IDF Sgt. Itay Chen, 19, told JNS on Sunday.

Itay, from Netanya, was stationed at the Nahal Oz army base as part of a tank unit when Hamas terrorists captured him along with three other soldiers on Oct. 7.

At one point, he was one of six hostages with dual American citizenship thought to be still alive in Gaza. On March 12, the Israel Defense Forces declared him dead in absentia. His body remains in the Palestinian enclave.

Chen spoke to JNS on his way back to Israel after participating in the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“I think it was positive,” he said. “We set out to keep the topic of the hostages at the top of the agenda in the United States. It was very successful.”

“Jon and Rachel Polin’s speech was very good and we were all well received by the delegates from across the political spectrum, even Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez,” Chen added.

Last Wednesday night, the parents of American-Israeli hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin addressed the gathering. Hersch’s father, Jonathan Polin, told the delegates, “This is a political convention. But needing our only son, and all of the cherished hostages, home is not a political issue. It is a humanitarian issue.”

Despite the lack of progress in the latest hostage-release talks, the United States has called the negotiations “constructive.”

Chen believes that the hostage crisis is a quintessential American issue based on fundamental freedom.

“We stand together especially after 9/11, and she was willing to take a picture with me,” Chen said in reference to Queens-Bronx Rep. Ocasio-Cortez, a longtime critic of Israel and a member of the progressive Squad in the House of Representatives. “We said we will try to find some time to have a more formal meeting. I hope that it will happen. We, New Yorkers, have a special bond.”

Chen noted that he had received a similarly warm welcome from politicians at the Republican National Convention last month in Wisconsin, where Orna and Ronen Neutra, parents of Omer, a Hamas captive in Gaza, spoke.

“These are critical times,” Chen said Sunday. “Each day, more hostages are being killed in captivity,” he added, while urging immediate action.