Simcha Rothman: Adam "Hamas are nice guys" Boehler "doing great damage" to effort to return hostages

MK Simcha Rothman said during a meeting of the Knesset Constitution Committee today (Monday) that Adam Boehler, President Donald Trump's envoy for freeing hostages, was doing "great damage" to the effort to free Hamas' hostages.

At the committee meeting, Rothman said that people who quote what Hamas says and who conduct direct negotiations with Hamas is making an "enormous" mistake which endangers the hostages.

Adam Boehler, who has been conducting direct negotiations with Hamas on behalf of Trump, defended this effort to bypass the Israeli government by saying that he is not an agent of Israel, and he also made statements that sounded like he took Hamas' word unquestioningly in terms of the proposals they made - including their alleged willingness to disarm.

Boehler also made statements that seemed to belittle the actions and moral turpor of Hamas: "Maybe I would see them and say, ‘Look, they don’t have horns growing out of their head. They’re actually guys like us. They’re pretty nice guys."

After giving a series of interviews saying things in a similar vein and in the face of increasingly intensive criticism, Boehler said on X that:

"I want to be CRYSTAL CLEAR as some have misinterpreted. Hamas is a terrorist organization that has murdered thousands of innocent people. They are BY DEFINITION BAD people. And as the President has said, not a single Hamas member will be safe if Hamas doesn’t RELEASE ALL HOSTAGES IMMEDIATELY."

Former US Ambassador David Friedman also strongly criticized Boehler:

"This past week, President Trump brilliantly presented Hamas with a binary choice: release all the hostages and surrender, or be destroyed. It is the only path to ending the war. If I heard Adam Boehler correctly on the Sunday news shows, he took the unprecedented step to meet with Hamas to consider a third way — whether a deal could be struck where Hamas “would not be involved” in governing Gaza. A deal with Hamas is a waste of time and will never be kept. Attempting one is beneath the dignity of the United States. Adam, I know you mean well but listen to your boss. The choice must remain binary."