Become a Member
USA

Hostage deal moved Trump to tears, says new US Middle East envoy Witkoff

Washington’s man in the Middle East said the agreement, which he helped broker, was the ‘most worthy thing’ he could do in his lifetime

January 27, 2025 11:01
Witkoff Getty 2194438075
Steve Witkoff, the US' new special envoy to the Middle East, revealed that the recent hostage releases moved President Trump to tears (Image: Getty)

ByAkiva van Koningsveld, Jewish News Syndicate

2 min read

Steve Witkoff, the new US Middle East envoy, has described the ceasefire deal he helped broker between Israel and Hamas as "the most worthy thing I could ever do in my life."

Speaking alongside Israeli President Isaac Herzog at the official opening of the Altneu Synagogue on Manhattan's Upper East Side, Witkoff said: "I have to thank President Trump because, without him, I don't think that we would have had the deal. When he asked me to do this job, he said to me: ‘We got to get these people home.’"

He continued: "And he knew—because he had been at my son's funeral—that I was a member of a very bad club, the club of parents who have buried a child. And I'm always comparing my family and what it went through when I lost my boy, Andrew, and what it must have been like for these families, because they've been tortured for 15 months, not knowing what was going to happen to their girls, not knowing if people were going to survive the winter."

Witkoff's son died in 2011 aged just 22 as a result of an opioid overdose while checked into a rehab facility in LA.