President Joe Biden will meet Wednesday with relatives of American hostages whom Hamas terrorists captured on Oct. 7, after the White House reportedly denied requests from the families to attend its Hanukkah reception.
Biden will meet with the families at the White House, NBC News reported, citing a White House official. The families' visit will mark their first in-person meeting with the president, after the parties previously met virtually. Vice President Kamala Harris and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan have met in-person with some of the families.
Some of the family members had asked to attend a Monday night reception at the White House for the fifth night of Hanukkah, CNN reported that day. But Ruby Chen, the mother of Itay Chen, a member of the Israel Defense Forces and a dual American-Israeli citizen missing since the Hamas attacks, told the outlet that she and other hostages' families were not among the 800 guests who received invitations to the event.
Biden did reference the hostages when he spoke at the reception, saying that he had spent about 20 hours working with Israeli, Egyptian, and Qatari officials to advance aid into Gaza and pressure Hamas to release the remaining hostages.
Monday's apparent snub was not the first time a hostage's family complained about Biden administration officials. Rachel Goldberg, the mother of hostage Hersh Goldberg-Polin, said last month that one U.S. official asked her how often Hamas lets her speak to her son. She called the exchange "a real slap," adding that "not everyone in the American government even understands what happened."
Last week, hostages' families said they were thankful for the support they have received from the Biden administration thus far, but they also expressed frustration that their relatives had not come home yet.