US First Lady Melania Trump handed the 2025 International Women of Courage Award to former Israeli hostage Amit Soussana during a special ceremony at the American State Department today (Tuesday).
Soussana was one of eight women from around the world to be given the award. She was given the award in recognition of her continued advocacy for all of the hostages who were kidnapped on October 7, 2023 and for those who remain captive in Gaza nearly a year and a half later, as well as for her bravery in being the first former hostage to publically describe the sexual abuse she was subjected to by her captors.
Soussana stated upon receiving the award from the First Lady, "It is with deep gratitude that I stand before you today as an awardee of the 2025 International Women of Courage Award alongside the courageous women here, women that I'm honored and grateful to have met."
"This is an honor I never imagined receiving, and one I wish I didn't have to accept under these circumstances," she said. "My name is Amit Soussana, and I am a survivor."
She recounted, "On October 7th, my world changed forever. I was taken hostage by Hamas and held captive for 55 days. 55 days of pain, of fear, and of being stripped of every freedom I once took for granted. In captivity, I had no control over my body, no control over my body, no control over my life. I resisted as best I could, but it was not enough to stop what happened to me."
"The darkness was suffocating, yet even in the darkness, there was one thing they could not have taken from me: The strength my mother instilled in me, the belief that we must always stand for what is right no matter the cost," she declared.
She called the award ceremony a "deeply painful moment" despite the honor she was given, because, "While I am here, my friends remain in the darkness. 543 long days and nights. They are still suffering, still waiting, still hoping. Their voices remain unheard, so I will speak for them."
"We cannot move forward until they are free. I vowed that if I would survive, I would never be silent. I would speak not just for myself, but for every woman who had been silenced," she said. "When I first told my story, I only wanted to raise awareness about the horrors of captivity and the terror of October 7th, but my story became part of a much bigger conversation, one about sexual violence, about war, and about the unimaginable strength of women in the face of brutality."
The State Department stated, "Amit Soussana uses her voice to courageously advocate for survivors by using her own lived example to describe the trauma she suffered as a hostage of the October 7th attack in Israel. Ms. Soussana has raised awareness of the conditions faced by the women, men, girls, and boys who remain hostages of Hamas. As an attorney at law, she holds an LLB from Sapir College and has been a licensed member of the Israel Bar Association since 2014. Ms. Soussana has extensive experience in intellectual property law, having worked at Luzzatto & Luzzatto, Attorneys and Patent Attorneys from 2015 to 2024, where she managed client files, negotiated with foreign patent attorney offices, and handled patent and trademark registrations both in Israel and abroad. Ms. Soussana is an advocate for the hostages that remain under Hamas control following the October 7, 2023 attacks."
In her remarks at the ceremony, First Lady Trump praised all women who "persist in their struggles" and "the women who are driven to speak out for justice, even though their voices are trembling; to the women who are motivated to rise up for their community, when all others remain indifferent; to the women who feel compelled to heal wounds caused by hatred — and cherish peace."