500 Days in Captivity: The Plight of the Hamas Hostages

Editor’s note: Feb. 17, 2025, marked 500 days in captivity for the remaining 76 of the 250 hostages taken when Hamas terrorists struck southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and killed over 1,200 people.

The Heritage Foundation hosted an event marking those 500 days on Tuesday, hearing from family members of those still held hostage as well as from rescued hostage Ilana Gritzewsky.

Following are lightly edited event remarks from Victoria Coates, vice president of The Heritage Foundation’s Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute.

Preparing for these remarks, it was hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that it’s been 501 agonizing days since the horrific Hamas attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. I know for those who have endured captivity or have had a loved one taken, each of these days has been a fresh hell of suffering and uncertainty. 

Every hostage who has been returned is a blessing, and those who have survived are an amazing testimony to the strength of the human spirit under the most vile of conditions. 

I want to extend my personal welcome to The Heritage Foundation to Ilana Gritzewsky, a former hostage whose boyfriend, Matan Zangauker, remains in captivity. Ilana, you honor us with your presence, and Matan will be in our prayers. 

I also want to welcome Ilay David, whose brother, Evyatar, remains in Gaza; Gal Gilboa-Dalal, whose brother, Guy, remains in Gaza; and Moshe Lavi, whose brother-in-law, Omri Miran, remains in Gaza. May they all be returned to you soon.

Among the atrocities committed on Oct. 7, the mass abduction of more than 250 innocents, most of them civilians, stands out. It is to my knowledge the largest modern terrorist hostage-taking—dwarfing, for example, the 1979 hostage-taking at the American Embassy in Tehran, and now surpassing that episode, which was 444 days, in duration. 

This was not an accidental occurrence that took place in the heat of the moment. It was an integral part of Hamas’ planning designed to inflict the maximum pain on the entire nation of Israel—indeed, on the entire global Jewish community, as the terrorists didn’t ask for anyone’s passports and scooped up victims, including Americans, indiscriminately.

At first, it seemed there might be a timely conclusion to the hostage crisis as some releases were negotiated in December 2023, including Ilana’s. But those ran dry in early 2024. The Israel Defense Forces heroically rescued a few in the spring, including Noa Argamani—we miss her today but know she is here in spirit as we continue to give thanks for her return. 

In September, we had the horrible news that three hostages were executed point blank in the tunnels shortly before they were to be rescued. Their recovered bodies revealed the horrible conditions under which they had been kept—starved and deprived of basic necessities, even air. This ugly reality has been further demonstrated by the condition of some of those recently released, making the urgency to get anyone else we can out all the more acute.

Our purpose here today is to bear witness to the most recent grim post-Oct. 7 milestone: 500 days of captivity for the remaining hostages, as of yesterday, which we pray is coming to a resolution. 

It’s not a time for politics, but I do think we can reflect on the effect of different styles of American leadership on this crisis. While President Joe Biden does deserve credit for his early visit to Israel in the days after the attacks and his words of support while there, it does not appear Hamas feared a strong U.S. reprisal for the hostage-taking, even though there were Americans among them. Instead, it appears Hamas was emboldened to string out their agony as long as they could during the Biden administration.

Only after then-President-elect Donald Trump’s strong statement on the hostages in early December 2024 did the situation start to shift. Rather than trying to persuade or cajole Hamas into letting them go, President Trump threatened “all hell would break loose” if the hostages were not released. Finally, more hostages started to come out last month, and there will hopefully be 10 more—six living—this coming week. 

Let’s let that sink in for a moment. The fact that Hamas considers holding the bodies of dead innocents for 500 days as a legitimate tool of statecraft tells you everything you need to know about how deeply corrupted and broken that terrorist organization is and what an impossible situation Israel is in having to deal with these devils to try to get their people back. 

I am glad the new Trump administration has been equally forceful in its expressions of support for Israel’s just and necessary actions against Hamas as well as its recognition that a decision to resume the war once as many hostages are recovered as possible will be an internal Israeli security matter, not something to be dictated by the United States.

In reality, we are in this war together, because if the forces of evil that broke into southern Israel now 501 days ago are not defeated, they will not be satisfied with regrouping to attack the Jewish state again—they will be coming for the United States as well. 

We watched from Heritage last summer as the pro-Hamas supporters protesting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech to Congress marched past our building, winding up down Massachusetts Avenue at Union Station where they ripped down the flags, burned them, and replaced them with Palestinian flags. And those weren’t Israeli flags they burned—they were American flags. If the terrorists defeat the little Satan, Israel, it is only a matter of time until the Great Satan, America, is in the cross hairs.

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