Ayelet Samerano, the mother of 21-year-old October 7 victim Jonathan Samerano, speaks to National Review.
The mother of a man killed in the October 7 terrorist attacks praised the Trump administration’s handling of Hamas terrorism in contrast to an approach by the Biden team that, she said, failed to prioritize counterterrorism.
“The Trump government is much more different than the previous one regarding all the issues of hostages,” Ayelet Samerano, the mother of 21-year-old October 7 victim Jonathan Samerano, told National Review in a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Jonathan’s body was taken to Gaza by an UNRWA employee, according to Israel’s government. Ayelet has been involved in advocacy efforts targeting the organization, which was banned from Israel earlier this year. In August, she interrupted a speech that UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini was delivering in Switzerland, to demand that he help her get her son’s body back from Gaza.
Samerano said that she spent the previous several days meeting officials in Washington and New York about the ongoing hostage deal. “I’m not saying that the previous one didn’t do anything, but we can feel the difference. We can feel the way they are reacting and the way they are demanding our hostages back,” she said.
Soon after President Trump was elected, he ordered Steve Witkoff, his Middle East envoy, to secure a cease-fire deal. The ensuing agreement between Hamas and Israel is slated to be implemented in three phases.
As part of the first phase, Hamas has in recent weeks released small groups of Israeli hostages that it had kidnapped during the terror attacks, in exchange for Palestinian security detainees, the majority of whom have been imprisoned in Israel for terrorism. Hamas has also exchanged the bodies of Israelis killed in the attacks or in Palestinian captivity.
But Samerano expressed concerns about the second phase of the deal, which would see Hamas release all of the remaining living hostages alongside full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.
“We don’t want it to be the same as phase one, because I think everybody could see what it’s meant to wait every week for three or four people who have just come from hell,” she said, also citing the “psychological terror” of propaganda rallies Hamas has organized surrounding each hostage release.
Samerano brought these concerns to a range of people in Trump’s orbit and other allies of Israel during her meetings in Washington. She met with Witkoff, national security adviser Mike Waltz, U.S. ambassador to the U.N.–designate Elise Stefanik, Senator John Fetterman, and other lawmakers.
She called Trump’s team “very supportive” and said it is approaching the hostage negotiations as a “mission.” By contrast, the Biden team had said that “we must solve the Israeli–Palestinian conflict” and neglected to make combating Hamas terrorism a priority,” she added.
“It was very, very sad to hear, because October 7 was not Palestinian and Israeli conflict. On October 7, it was a terror attack.”
Samerano said that she showed Stefanik footage of an UNRWA employee seizing her son’s body, and that Stefanik said that she would handle U.S. efforts to deal with the organization personally. “Her mission in the United Nations is to come and make sure that organizations under the umbrella of the United Nations cannot be part of terror,” Samerano said.
“You can see the difference. What I saw is that most of the people around Trump are businessmen. And they are people that don’t need money or power; they are coming with a mission,” she added.
“I really appreciate the people in the new government. I think that it’s important not just because of the Israeli and American relationship. It’s very important because we are dealing with terror, and terror can happen everywhere in the world, not just in Israel, not just in the United States.”