Hamas releases propaganda video featuring Israeli-American hostage Edan Alexander

The Hamas military wing released a propaganda video on Saturday showing an American hostage.

It was the first video of its kind to be shared in months.

The undated video, posted on secure messaging service Telegram, shows 20-year-old Edan Alexander. The message says that Alexander has been arrested kidnapped by Hamas more than 420 days. If true, the video would have been taken last week.

In the video – spoken in a mixture of Hebrew and English – Alexander addresses Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, saying “you ignored us.”

He also addressed President-elect Donald Trump, asking him to use “his influence and the absolute power of the United States to negotiate our freedoms.”

In a statement issued by the headquarters of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, Alexander's mother Yael Alexander said her son. “It stands for all living captives who cannot make their voices heard, and this voice needs to resonate and move everyone!”

Alexander grew up in New Jersey and was a soldier in the Israeli army when Hamas militants attacked on the morning of October 7, 2023. The then 19-year-old was able to send a quick message to his mother amid heavy fighting in his camp near the Gaza border. .

He told him that despite the fact that the bombs were placed in his helmet due to the explosion, he was able to reach a safe place. After seven o'clock in the morning, his family lost contact, the Associated Press reported.

“He told me even though things were getting dangerous around him. It was the last time I heard my son's voice. I can't describe the pain of not knowing where your child is and how he is,” said Yael Alexander. CBS New York in October.

When a week-long suspension last November they brought about the release of 105 captives in exchange for 240 Palestinian prisoners, some of the freed captives claimed to have seen Alexander in custody. Varda Ben Baruch, his grandmother, told the AP that the captors told her that Alexander was cool, and encouraged them that everyone would be released soon.

Alexander's father Adi Alexander told “CBS Mornings” in September that they are pushing Israeli and American leaders for a cease-fire agreement.

“We hope he's holding on and we're going to get him,” Adi Alexander said. “You need to survive.”

Adi and Yael Alexander met with Presidents Biden and Trump in Washington earlier this month and urged them to work together to bring all the hostages home under one accord, according to the AP.

More than 250 people were kidnapped and 1,200 killed when Hamas terrorists stormed the border and carried out bloody attacks on communities in southern Israel. Israel's subsequent war with Hamas has since killed more than 43,000 Palestinians, according to local health officials.

Netanyahu's office said in a statement on Saturday that he spoke with Alexander's family after the release of the “brutal psychological warfare video.”

“The Prime Minister said in the interview that he feels very well the pain faced by Edan and the hostages and their families, and he promised that Israel is working diligently and in every way to return them home, as well as all the hostages in the hands of the enemy,” the statement said.

US National Security Council spokesman Sean Savett said the White House had been in contact with the Alexander family. He said in a statement on Saturday that the propaganda video “is a cruel reminder of the terror of Hamas against the citizens of many countries, including our own.”

“The war in Gaza will stop tomorrow and the suffering of the Gazans will end immediately – and it would have ended months ago – if Hamas agreed to release the hostages,” Savett said. “It refused to do that, but as the President said last week, we have an important opportunity to conclude an agreement to release the hostages, stop the war, and provide humanitarian aid to Gaza. This agreement is now on the table.”

The headquarters of the Forum for Hostages and Missing Families said in a statement that the video is “definite evidence that despite all the rumors – there are hostages alive and suffering a lot.”

“One year after the first and only agreement, it is clear to everyone: the return of hostages is possible only with an agreement,” the group said. “After more than 420 days of continuous torture, hunger and darkness, the urgency of repatriating all 101 hostages cannot be overemphasized.”