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Trump warns there will be ‘all hell to pay’ if hostages aren’t released by Jan. 20
After making threat as candidate at the RNC, president-elect doubles down, two days after Hamas releases video of American-Israeli captive begging him to secure a deal.
Jacob Magid | JNS | 12-3-24 | Condensed
The American-Israeli hostage from Long Island, NY, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors, announced dead on Monday.
US President-elect Donald Trump on Monday threatened those holding hostages in the Middle East with unprecedented American firepower if they are not released by the time he enters office on January 20.
Trump first made a similar threat as a presidential candidate at the Republican National Convention in July, but the latest warning posted on Truth Social came two days after Hamas released a propaganda video showing American-Israeli hostage Edan Alexander pleading with the president-elect to secure his release.
The statement also came hours after the IDF revealed that another American-Israeli hostage — Omer Neutra — was killed during Hamas’s October 7 onslaught and that his body is being held in Gaza. Neutra had been thought to be alive, in captivity.
“Everybody is talking about the hostages who are being held so violently, inhumanely, and against the will of the entire World, in the Middle East – But it’s all talk and no action!” Trump wrote on Truth Social, without mentioning Israel or the Palestinian terror group by name.
“Please let this TRUTH serve to represent that if the hostages are not released prior to January 20, 2025, the date that I proudly assume Office as President of the United States, there will be ALL HELL TO PAY in the Middle East, and for those in charge who perpetrated these atrocities against Humanity,” he continued.
“Those responsible will be hit harder than anybody has been hit in the long and storied History of the United States of America. RELEASE THE HOSTAGES NOW!” Trump added.
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He called for the hostages’ release several times throughout his presidential campaign, but also made a point of insisting that most of the hostages are no longer alive.
Accordingly, he was reportedly caught off guard when President Isaac Herzog told him in a call late last month that Israeli intelligence assesses that half of the hostages still in Gaza are alive.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s wife Sara said she raised the plight of the hostages during her dinner on Sunday night with Trump at the president-elect’s golf resort in Florida.
In November, Netanyahu said he had directed the IDF to come up with a plan for boxing out Hamas from the distribution of humanitarian aid, but Washington and Israel’s Arab allies have warned that this goal is impossible as long as Israel continues to refuse the involvement of a reformed Palestinian Authority, given that they do not see any other viable option in Gaza capable of filling any vacuum left by Hamas.
Edan Alexander, Sagui Dekel-Chen and Keith Siegel are the last remaining American hostages believed to still be alive. The bodies of four other Americans — Neutra, Judith Weinstein, Gadi Haggai and Itay Chen — are still being held in Gaza.
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