Eli Sharabi, a former hostage freed from captivity in Gaza last month, will meet with US President Donald Trump this week, a relative said Sunday.
Sharon Sharabi said his brother will meet Trump at the White House Tuesday along with other released captives, whom he did not name.
The delegation will impress upon the president the importance of all the hostages being freed, Sharabi told Channel 12 news.
He said the trip had been facilitated “due to the generosity” of Miriam Adelson, a major financial backer of Trump’s political campaigns.
There was no confirmation of the meeting from officials in the US or Israel.
The meeting apparently came together after subtitled segments of an interview Eli Sharabi gave to an Israeli television program were passed to Trump, who had previously spoken out about Sharabi’s emaciated state upon his release.
In the interview with Channel 12’s “Uvda” investigative magazine, Eli Sharabi described having been chained, beaten and starved by his captors, with abuse getting worse whenever Israeli leaders touted the worsened prison conditions of captured Hamas operatives.
Former national security minister Itamar Ben Gvir refused on Saturday to apologize for statements he made that Sharabi said led to him being tortured.
Sharabi, 53, was kidnapped from his home in Kibbutz Be’eri on October 7, 2023, when thousands of Hamas-led terrorists stormed southern Israel to kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the war in Gaza.
A second brother, Yossi Sharabi, was also taken hostage on October 7 and was likely killed in an IDF strike in Gaza. His body is still being held by terrorists.
Eli Sharabi lost 40 percent of his body weight in captivity, and learned upon returning to Israel that his wife Lianne and teenage daughters Noiya and Yahel were murdered in the Hamas onslaught.
After Sharabi was released on February 8, Trump said he and two others freed that day looked “like Holocaust survivors.”
Adelson, the widow of casino mogul Sheldon Adelson, was among Trump’s top financial backers during his most recent run for president, having donated $100 million to his campaign.
The Tel Aviv-born physician and philanthropist has used her clout to ensure that the hostages’ plight remains high on Trump’s agenda, according to reports.
Despite sometimes contradictory statements from Trump, his special Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, has been active in negotiating the continuation of the current ceasefire in return for the release of more hostages.
On Saturday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office announced it is endorsing a proposal by Witkoff to extend the current ceasefire deal through Passover, which ends on April 19, rather than advancing to its second stage as required by an outline agreed to by Israel and Hamas.
According to Israel’s account of Witkoff’s proposal, half of the remaining hostages — living and dead — would be released on the first day of the extended ceasefire, and the remaining captives would be released at the end of the period if a permanent ceasefire is reached.
The Israeli statement claimed that Hamas has so far rejected the US plan, and implied that if this stance isn’t changed, Israel could resume the war against the Palestinian terror group that was sparked by the latter’s October 7, 2023, onslaught and which has been on pause since January 19.
Hamas has indeed publicly rejected Israel’s proposal to extend the first stage of the deal, insisting that the deal proceed with phase two — which includes the release of all remaining living hostages, a full withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza, and a permanent end to the war. Israel has largely refused to negotiate the details of phase two for the past month.
The first phase of the ceasefire officially lasted 42 days and saw the release of 30 hostages — 20 Israeli civilians, five soldiers, and five Thai nationals — and the bodies of eight slain Israeli captives.
Terror groups in the Gaza Strip are still holding 59 hostages, including 58 of the 251 abducted by Hamas-led terrorists on October 7, 2023.
The terror group freed 105 civilians during a weeklong truce in late November 2023, and four hostages were released before that in the early weeks of the war.
Eight hostages have been rescued from captivity by troops alive, and the bodies of 41 have also been recovered, including three mistakenly killed by the Israeli military as they tried to escape their captors, and the body of a soldier who was killed in 2014.
The body of another soldier killed in 2014, Lt. Hadar Goldin, is still being held by Hamas, and is counted among the 59 hostages.