All (Hostage) Lives Matter
Are we hoping for Hamas to develop an inverse Stockholm Syndrome?
“A rock reveals itself to be sacred because its very existence is a hierophany: incompressible, invulnerable, it is that which man is not.”
Mircea Eliade
Iron rains and blood pours in the Holy Land again, where America’s pound of flesh was claimed on 7 October: thirty-three lives, a stark toll, and one of the darkest days in American civil history. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says ten American lives still linger in the Land of the Captive, Gaza, hostages of Hamas. But who knows?
There was a time when such horror would seize the press from coast to coast, the President’s voice would thunder with threats of fire and fury until America’s children were returned unharmed; screens would keep score, syncing the nation’s heartbeats with the fate of the missing. Now, there is silence, quieter than an afterthought.
At best, the collective wisdom is that it was their tough luck, caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But deeper than this is the gnawing truth that they are simply the wrong people. Second-class victims of a perpetratorless crime.
In 2014, when similar terror struck as hundreds of girls were taken by Boko Haram in Nigeria, then-First Lady Michelle Obama was quick to signal that wasn’t OK, sparking a global campaign of hashtag diplomacy. Even though she had the ears of the most powerful man in the world, she decided that the best course of action was to raise the hostages to the prized status of ‘the current thing’, as if she could tweet them away from captivity.
Yet here we are, a full month on, and the American hostages remain off the agenda for Mrs. Obama and the American establishment. No hashtags, no pledges, no outcry. In fairness, she also lost interest in the dozens of girls still missing in Nigeria to this day. The spotlight has moved on, and with it, Mrs. Obama’s interest — perhaps to the politically greener pastures of climate change, abortion, and LGBT pandering.
Now, I understand the humanist approach of ‘all hostages matter’, or the nationalist approach of ‘American hostages matter.’ What puzzles me — and makes me sick to my stomach — is the tribalist approach of ‘only the hostages I see as my own matter.’
Biden’s #MeToo moment: he’s also a hostage
“He who defends everything, defends nothing.”
Frederick the Great
Napoleon famously prayed to find a coalition on the opposite side of the battlefield. President Biden — the ‘leader’ of the increasingly dysfunctional rainbow coalition — knows exactly why. And he is reminded of that daily, which is helpful since he struggles to remember even where he is most of the time.
On the plus side, he can count on the mainstream media to fight his battles for him. They’ve got the memo that acknowledging a hostage crisis would make him look even more like the second coming of Jimmy Carter, further damaging his chances in 2024. The media drama over the Boko Haram girls in 2014 — or the similarly doomed Chilean miners in 2010 and Thai boys in 2018 — meant a ratings frenzy for little to no cost. But with the American hostages in Gaza, the political cost is so high the press is tiptoeing around the issue as if the floor’s littered with landmines.
And lest we forget Brittney Griner, who wasn’t even a hostage. Her perceived ‘captivity’ monopolised headlines for months, ending with an extreme sacrifice from Biden, exchanging the ‘Merchant of Death’ for an otherwise pointless card-carrying member of the ‘coalition’ — who landed herself in trouble through her own stupidity. A sick joke, where the American hostages in Gaza are now the punchline.
Ignoring these hostages amounts to nothing less than their dehumanisation, which can only be partially justified by our unspoken expectation that this hostage crisis will not end well, that the grim reaper is due a field day. That only underscores the US Government should call it what it is: a war crime. To dismiss this fact signals more than virtue; it shows a tolerance for war crimes against America’s own — an untenable stance in the long run.
But Biden himself is a political hostage to his motley crew. He can’t call a spade a spade — to acknowledge this hostage crisis as an attack on America would fracture the very coalition he’s in bed with. When Americans are killed or kidnapped, he must pussyfoot around terror and its sponsors. He’s hamstrung, and his voice lacks the fervour needed for deterrence.
Qatar doesn’t lose a second’s sleep over the possibility of being labelled a ‘terrorist haven’ or any threats to turn over known Hamas leaders in the country or else. Serving as a reliable purveyor of weapons, diplomatic mediation and even financial aid to the likes of Hamas, Al Qaeda, and others has become business as usual for them.
Ironically, the capital, Doha, is home to the Al Udeid Air Base, which the US Embassy in Qatar regards as “critical to global efforts to counter terrorism, maintain stability, and promote regional security.” Now exposed as the world’s most expensive sandcastle, it beats the drum of counterterrorism while the terrorists sit at the sumptuous banquet table next door. How’s that for deterrence? Remember, China, Russia, and Iran are watching and taking notes.
Dual-threat
Overlooked in this situation is a curious, perhaps unique thing about the American hostages in Gaza: most of them are presumed to hold some form of dual citizenship, something deemed illegal until the Supreme Court changed the rules with the Afroyim v. Rusk decision of 1967.
Beys Afroyim, born in Poland, became an American citizen in 1926. After learning that he had voted in the 1951 Israeli elections, the State Department stripped him of his American citizenship in 1960, based on the 1940 Nationality Act. Afroyim challenged the constitutionality of the act in court and won, with the Supreme Court ruling that U.S. citizens may not be stripped of their citizenship involuntarily.
Israeli law plays it smart. Under the 1950 Law of Return, Israel grants the right of citizenship to all Jews (by birth or conversion), their children, grandchildren, and spouses, who have expressed their desire to settle in Israel. While the US doesn’t recognise dual citizenship, it can’t stop other countries from issuing passports.
This obviously raises a number of different questions but is unlikely to contribute to the lack of enthusiasm for the American hostages. Under US law, every American citizen is equal irrespective of what other nations may say. And the US Government has to protect all of them. Again, as it was done for Brittney Griner.
Call it what it is and say their names
Biden stands, a frail figure of inaction before unchecked aggression. Unable to establish credible deterrence, and without it, the possibility looms of his ultimate capitulation: sitting down to negotiate with Hamas or their surrogates.
The US mainstream media’s silence on the hostage situation reveals a dire indictment of its true nature as a state-run propaganda arm. Over 40 years since the Iranian hostage crisis, when we had a story and a face for every person taken, we now meet silence and indifference.
Taking American hostages is a clear act of aggression against the United States. This should be denounced as a hostility and met with a strong response, not tacitly accepted as an ‘unfortunate accident.’ Were it clear to terrorists that such actions won’t be tolerated, perhaps we’d see fewer ‘oops’ kidnappings.
The public indifference signals a grim acceptance: under the Biden Regime, American civilians are no longer untouchable; they are fair game. The once-powerful American passport has crumbled under its weight.
The hostage crisis is real, and it is a scandal that the US Government and media are downplaying it. I’ve tried to find the complete list of names of Americans currently taken hostage. But I couldn’t find one. It might be my inability to use Google, or perhaps it’s because some names haven’t been made public. I don’t know. Maybe that’s the point. The Biden Regime is tossing out the rulebook on American identity, rendering it dangerously diluted. And we’re just accidental hostages caught in the thick of the fallout.
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I wonder if Israeli press or government spokesman would be able to provide the names of the 33 American hostages? Excellent article.
This is great work Cauf! Your style is always so refreshing and captivating. Situations like this make sorta miss the former President who’d threaten to blow up Red Square if Russia invaded Ukraine. #PeaceThruStrength