Nearly 20 months ago, Israeli-American Itay Chen was kidnapped by Hamas while serving in a tank battalion on the Gaza border. Along with around 250 other individuals, at least 10 of whom also had American citizenship, Itay was then brought into Gaza, where he is still being held.
On Thursday, the bodies of Israeli-American dual citizens Judith Weinstein Haggai and Gadi Haggai, who were murdered on October 7, 2023, were rescued from Gaza. Itay is now one of just two US citizens still held in Gaza. A total of 56 hostages remain in Gaza, only about a third of whom are believed to be alive.
The Media Line’s Felice Friedson spoke with Itay’s father, Ruby Chen, about his efforts to bring his son back home.
A native of New York City, Chen compared his emotional experience to a ride on the Cyclone, the famous Coney Island roller coaster.
“You know, we have those big ups and downs,” he said. “And it’s difficult to process. We were notified, it came out on the news, that two US citizens were going to come back via an IDF operation. That means that there are two US citizens remaining in captivity. One of them is my son. And I hope that my expectation is that the administration does whatever it can to get the two remaining US citizens out of captivity as well.”
After 20 months, exhaustion peaks
After 20 painful months, Chen is exhausted. “We feel like this ordeal has gone long enough,” he said. “And we are just simple people. And we feel like we are collateral damage of big issues. And it’s a humanitarian thing. There’s no competition. You just need to get them out.”
He said that he and his family have attended dozens of meetings in Washington, DC, with the family of Judith and Gadi. “We just pray for them that they have their closure and can start their rehabilitation,” he said. “I like to say that we, the hostage families, have been beamed up to an alternative universe. And now, at least the family gets a ticket back into this universe. And we’re still waiting to come back to this universe.”
For Chen, the way to secure the return of the remaining hostages is clear. “I think everyone understands, including the Israeli government, that the way to get the remaining 56 hostages is not via operations, military operations with the IDF,” he said. “That can only happen in an agreement. On the other hand, there’s a very bad actor, a terrorist organization. But we, as Jewish people, have survived for thousands of years by valuing life as a virtue. And that means something. And there needs to be a way to get the last hostage out.”
After ensuring that all the hostages are back home, Israel can work on solving other issues, he said.
“We’re simple family people,” he said. “My son is not the son of a president, a minister, or prime minister. What we want is to have closure. And I think after 600 days, it’s more than enough for the government of Israel to find a way to get a deal that gets all of the hostages out, and not in phases.”
Among the ups and downs Chen has dealt with over the past 20 months is the changing administration in the US. He described the ceasefire that took effect in January, during which 33 hostages were released, as “a bipartisan effort.”
Chen noted that 45 American citizens were killed in the October 7 attacks. “It’s not as if the United States is just a facilitator,” he said. “They actually have equity in this, meaning justice needs to be seen. And yes, my son is a US citizen, and I pay taxes in the States, no different than anybody else in the United States. And there’s an expectation, a legal obligation, that this administration needs to find a way to get my son back.”
More Americans need to be aware of the American death toll on October 7, 2023, Chen said. He recounted running into Palestinian protesters at the 2024 Democratic National Convention, during which Rachel Goldberg-Polin and Jon Polin gave a speech about their son, Hersh, who was taken hostage by Hamas.
“I decided that I wanted to go outside and speak to them,” Chen said of the Palestinian protesters. “And I started by saying, Are you a proud US citizen? Are you a patriotic US citizen? And of course, the answer was yes. And then I shared with them, are you aware of the fact that 45 US citizens were killed on October 7? And that’s when they take a step back a second, and they need to process that.”
The US needs to put enough pressure on both Hamas and Israel in order to get to a deal, Chen said. “Then they could keep on doing what they’ve been doing for decades and decades, talking about the Palestinian issue,” he explained. “I think we need to decouple that issue, which is a very challenging topic, to the fact that this is a humanitarian issue. There are also people in Gaza that have been suffering for too long, being used as human shields by a terrorist organization that has no care whatsoever for the people in Gaza, and there needs to be a better future for all of us.”
He also called for the hostage issue to be decoupled from the very real issue of antisemitism.
“In the White House, meeting President Biden at the time and speaking to him about the topic, he shared the same sentiment that there’s a need for change and better education of the people of the United States,” Chen said.
“And it’s a big question to tackle. But going back to our small topic, you know, we’re very focused on our issue and wanting to end this conflict. Without antisemitism and without coupling it with other issues, we just want to decouple this issue of hostages from antisemitism or anything else.
As part of his efforts to bring Itay home, Chen addressed the UN Security Council last month.
“The UN exists, and we can’t attempt to ignore it,” he said. “Neither does the United States. Even the prime minister of Israel goes to the UN and speaks at the General Assembly. I intend to be back at the UN next week, following up on some of the relationships that were generated following my speech at the Security Council.”
He characterized the problem of missing people in conflict zones as “one of the core issues that the UN should focus on to try to solve,” noting that a 2019 UN resolution calls on countries to carry out search efforts for those who have gone missing.
That resolution, Security Council Resolution 2724, compels countries to return the remains of those killed in a conflict zone.
“There should be an exchange of the deceased to provide the final dignity that any person on this planet should have, and that is to bring him back to burial,” Chen said, describing the UN resolution. “That is something that is said in all of the religions, including Islam.
So we look at the situation in Gaza, where there are dozens of hostages that were notified that they were killed on October 7. And it is the lowest type of psychological warfare for a terrorist organization to hold dead people as negotiation chips. And I don’t care what religion you are. That is something that you just can’t do.”
Qatar has been involved in negotiating a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hamas, a role that Chen expressed ambivalence about.
“It is known that they are financial and ideological supporters of the Islamic Brotherhood, a very extreme organization that believes in killing Jews wherever they are,” he said of Qatar. “And it’s a topic that I think needs to be solved in the near future.
But the focus at the moment should be the release of the hostages and getting calm in the region, which is the United States’ strategic interest. The United States and Qatar have a very good diplomatic relationship, but I think it’s time to reassess that relationship. But at the moment, they are acting as a positive influence to get the hostages out.”
That’s the message that’s been communicated to hostage families by special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff, Chen said.
Since the October 7 attacks, Chen has totally devoted himself to the mission of advocating for the hostage families. “I got to know very influential people who were willing to take a call with me, whatever time in the day, in order to be helpful,” he said.
“At the end of the day, I’m not going to be able to change an individual in his beliefs, and if this topic is something that is not in his high priority, it’s not something that I’m going to be able to change because I said something,” Chen said. “I need to just be able to identify those people that have that inner belief that this is the most important topic, and that they are willing to do whatever is needed to get the hostages out.”
He highlighted Witkoff as one individual doing his all to bring the hostages back. “When we met him the first time, my wife and I in a very private setting, he shared with us that he lost his son about a decade and a half ago. And it’s a very special bond between us,” he said.
After so many months of trying to bring his son home, Chen isn’t sure what life will look like once he finally succeeds.
“It’s going to be a long process to figure out exactly what do we do from here,” he said. “At the moment, all of our energy is focused on one thing, and I think it should be. As any father or parent, your kid disappears on you, the only thing you could think is, I need to get him back, whatever his physical status is. Then, we could deal as a family with what lies ahead for us and the challenges that we face. It’s just impossible to leave this as an open issue and try to think of the future.”
He said that his wife, Hagit, is having an especially hard time. “A mom and a son, it’s a very special bond,” he said. “He was always a favorite. I would typically have disagreements with Itay. Itay is the middle sibling. He has an elder sibling and a younger sibling, so he was the more challenging one, so to speak. We would have our fights, and he would at one point say to me, Dad, why are we wasting energy? You know, I’m going to go to my mom. Mom’s going to say yes anyway. So why waste all this time and all this energy? And he would typically be correct in his assessment.”
Chen and his son liked to watch basketball together, the father supporting the Knicks and the son supporting the Celtics. “So in an alternative universe, we would have been watching the NBA, the Knicks against the Celtics, and just having any type of father-son type of evening. But we were beamed up to this universe, and it’s so unfortunate that it’s taken so long,” he said.
“He’s a very avid basketball player, and he loves playing basketball. And there’s every father’s moment in time where you play basketball with the kid, and you know, you let him beat you to give him, you know, a positive experience,” Chen said. “But there was that day when he was about 15 and a half when I didn’t give in, and he beat me. That was a very difficult day for me. You saw his emotions and how proud he was about putting in that hard work and, you know, being able to make that shot and being able to do what he wanted to do.”
As a father, he said, his goal was to give his son the foundations to build his own life. “We weren’t able to protect him enough,” he said.
Chen noted that Itay was serving in the military not as his profession but because of Israel’s mandatory enlistment policy. “It’s something that everyone who lives here does,” Chen said. “And my family are Holocaust survivors, as well as my wife’s family, and understanding the need to protect the Jewish state. And I very much believed in that. And, you know, it was a ceasefire. They were at the border, just protecting civilians, and this happened.”
He called on American citizens to ask their representatives to bring the hostages back home. “Just call up your senator, call up your congressman, say, you know, this hostage issue needs to end. There are still US citizens out there. Ask them what you did today. And get those hostages out and just keep on doing until we see an end to this humanitarian crisis,” he said.
