Brett McGurk, who led efforts to release Israeli hostages held by Hamas while a senior official in the Biden administration, caused a stir in Israel when he said during an interview on Sunday that “the idea that Hamas just was ready to release all the hostages is complete bull**t.”
He made the remark during an hour-long interview with Dan Senor, host of the “Call me Back Podcast,” on the eve of the release of his new book about the hostage negotiations: “Brink: Inside the Race to Free the October 7th Hostages.”
McGurk refuted recent reports, including from Hebrew daily Haaretz, that Hamas had signaled within a day of the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre that it was prepared to release all civilian hostages.
“Hamas was sending signals: ‘We’re ready to have a discussion,’ but their core demand from the beginning was, ‘Yeah, you can have the hostages in exchange for all Palestinian prisoners, and we stay in power ... permanent ceasefire, Oct. 6 status quo. ... We will reconstitute on Israel’s borders.’ And no Israeli government was ever going to accept that. But that was their core demand throughout,” said McGurk.
His comments were welcomed by Israelis who had demanded that Israel not end the war prematurely in return for the hostages.
Tzvika Mor, whose son Eitan was kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023, and who founded the Tikva Forum, a group of families of hostages abducted on Oct. 7, advocated for increased military pressure on Hamas and opposed any hostage deals until the terror group was defeated.
“The truth always wins in the end,” Mor posted to X on Sunday in response to the McGurk interview. “They called us death-eaters, said we didn’t care about Eitan. ... But we didn’t break. Despite the pain and the worry, we insisted that the State of Israel must not yield to Hamas, and throughout the entire two years, we repeated one sentence: ‘Only pressure on Hamas will bring back the hostages.’
“A year ago, all the hostages returned. Today, it was revealed from the mouth of Brett McGurk—a senior official in the Biden administration—that we were right all along: Deals don’t come out of thin air, but from pressure on Hamas.”
Mor’s son was freed in the final hostage deal on Oct. 13, 2025, after 738 days in captivity.
Israeli Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism Minister Amichai Chikli posted to X on Monday: “Brett McGurk, a senior figure in the Biden administration, shatters the mask of lies: A comprehensive deal was never on the table. The fantasy that such a deal was within reach, and only the government is preventing its realization, served the media and the opposition as a tool to attack the government during wartime.”
McGurk described how Hamas tried to change the conditions of the first deal in November 2023, designed to release the female hostages. The terror group claimed that it couldn’t locate all the women and wanted to switch to releasing older men. “The point is we had a deal for all women and children, unequivocal,” McGurk said. “And the decision from the Israeli side was unanimous: ‘No, we cannot. If we skip over the women, it’s basically we’re signing their death sentence.’”
Hamas saw the female hostages as the most valuable, McGurk said. “Israel had a key demand in every offer: Women come out first,” but Hamas would try to moderate that demand, he said. “Hamas believed, particularly [Hamas leader] Yahya Sinwar, that this war would end with Hamas holding a number of hostages ... for years.”
McGurk revealed that he also felt pressure on Hamas was the key. “I always thought, look, the only way to end this is a deal, and we’ve got to put the screws to Sinwar,” he said.
He also said every Israeli leader agreed that Hamas could not stay in power. “That wasn’t just [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu. That was everybody. ... However this ends, Hamas cannot be in power in Gaza, and the Israelis were unanimous.”
