A New Jersey teenager who is among the roughly 240 who were kidnapped by Hamas terrorists on October 7 will not be among the abductees to be freed during the upcoming 4-day pause.
Edan Alexander is a 19-year-old New Jersey native who volunteered to serve in the Israel Defense Forces after graduating from Tenafly High School in 2022 and was serving near the Gaza border during the brutal Hamas attack that left around 1,200 dead, most of them civilians.
His mother, Yael, recently said that she spoke to Edan on the morning he was abducted.
“He’s like telling me, ‘Mom, yeah, this, that, it’s like, crazy. It’s like World War II here,” she recalled.
“When they told me that [he was taken hostage] I was like, breathing for a second, because I knew, OK, so we have a hope now,” she added.
The release of an initial group of 13 Israeli and dual nationals is scheduled to take place on Friday, with a total of 50 hostages to be released over the four-day truce. If the fighting remains paused beyond that, an additional 10 hostages will be released each day.
However, sadly, Alexander would likely be one of the final hostages to be released, considering that he is an IDF soldier.
Alexander was not the only one with New Jersey roots to be caught up in the brutal Hamas attack. Another soldier, Itay Glisko, 20, was originally from Paramus, NJ, but moved to Israel when he was 2 years old. He was tragically killed during the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.
