Pearl pleas for return of U

Mar 22, 2025, 11:37 PM ET LEXINGTON, Ky.– Auburn basketball coach Bruce Pearl began his postgame NCAA males’s tournament news conference Saturday night by promoting for the release of Edan Alexander, the last living American imprisoned in Gaza by Hamas.Alexander, a 21-year-old Israeli-American soldier who grew up in the United States, is among 59 captives still in Gaza, over half of whom are believed to be dead. Recently, Hamas stated it would launch Alexander and the bodies of four other captives held there because its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel if Israel recommitted to a stalled ceasefire agreement.Pearl, who is Jewish, advocated Alexander’s return after the top-seeded Tigers’82-70 triumph over No. 9 Creighton, saying he sought his players ‘consent to bring up the subject.Editor’s Picks “I get asked a lot how this basketball program has actually become so competitive over the last 8 years,” Pearl stated. “However for me, I believe it was God’s plan to offer us this success, success beyond what we deserve. To provide us this platform. To provide us a chance to begin this conference briefly and advise the world that Edan Alexander is still imprisoned in Gaza right now. An American held hostage and insufficient people in this country understand his name.”

Alexander’s daddy, Adi, said Friday that he was more positive about the possibilities that the U.S. might secure his boy’s safe return.Asked later what made him want to discuss the hostage situation and the Israel-Hamas war, Pearl– an outspoken advocate of President Donald Trump– referenced his faith and household’s migration to the U.S. “Oct. 7 was the worst day considering that the Holocaust for the Jewish individuals, and they state they wish to do it once again and once again and once again. We have American hostages in Gaza today, and it’s inappropriate,”Pearl stated.”And President Trump called it out, and said if they just free the hostages, the killing would stop. Free the hostages, and the killing will stop, and that’s up to Hamas. “Pearl has repeatedly

voiced his assistance for Israel on social networks, and throughout a radio interview last month with Dan Bongino, a conservative podcaster and Trump follower who has been called deputy director of the FBI, he stated he supported Trump’s proposition to resettle the 2 million Palestinians who reside in Gaza.By talking about the subject during one of the year’s most-watched sporting occasions, Pearl took his views to a more comprehensive audience. “This Jewish American loves his country more than anything else. At the exact same time, Israel,

that is our ancestral homeland and it’s under attack,”he said. “It’s under siege. All it wishes to do is live in peace with its next-door neighbors.”