Captivity survivor Keith Siegel spoke with Arutz Sheva-Israel National News from the Knesset on his hope and optimism for the release of the remaining fifty hostages in Gaza, as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s meets with US President Donald Trump in Washington.
Siegel expressed his great appreciation to President Trump for “bringing me and so many hostages home, urging him to continue his efforts to secure an agreement that will bring all the fifty hostages home as soon as possible. I believe that Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, as well as the mediating countries, can pressure Hamas into an agreement to bring them all home.”
Siegel said that he spent time with four hostages in captivity, “Matan Angrest, a soldier who was seriously injured on October 7th; Omri Miran, a father of two young girls; and Gali and Ziv Berman, twin brothers from my kibbutz, Kfar Azza.”
Siegel says that, “I am taking care of myself. Every day I have the need and desire to be involved in any way that I can, so most of time is spent participating in activities, talking, interviewing, meeting with people, traveling abroad, meeting with governmental officials. We met with President Trump and Steve Witkoff several times. I really felt their engagement and commitment. They are setting this as a high priority to get the hostages back.”
“I’m trying to be with my family as much as I can, but I have another family since my release - that’s the big family of all of the hostages and their families,” says Siegel.
Siegel spoke also about the faith that held him and strengthened him in captivity, “I’m holding onto the faith. In captivity I put into my life more Jewish [elements], praying, my Jewish identity and my feeling of how important it is to me to be a Jew increased immensely when I was in captivity.”
“The terrorists were constantly trying to convert me to Islam and the more they did that, the more I felt that me being a Jew gave me a lot of strength. I also got a lot of strength thinking about Jews in the Holocaust, what they went through, what they had to deal with, and I thought a lot about the Jewish People, my people, who for so many years have suffered from so many wars, terrorist attacks. How we as a people have endured and survived, and built our country and keep it thriving. That gave me a lot of strength as well,” Siegel concluded.