Does President Joe Biden even know that Hamas is holding five American hostages? Does anybody in his administration care? Do the administration’s water carriers in the liberal media care, either?
One would think not, judging by the rarity of mentions of this crisis by the president, his spokespeople, or the news media. The absence of focused public concern is inexcusable. Even more inexcusable, unless there are covert operations in the offing, is the lack of action, whether diplomatic or by military special forces, to try to return U.S. citizens to safety and freedom.
Biden seems primarily concerned to put counterproductive pressure on Israel to stop its military actions without putting equal or greater pressure on Hamas. His inattention to the American hostages is astonishing. He met their families in December and featured them as guests on March 7 at his State of the Union speech. On April 24, he also quietly met with one of the few hostages who has been released, 4-year-old Abigail Mor Edan. But even he left it to national security adviser Jake Sullivan to say anything about the meeting.
The president seems not to want to be seen involving himself in the issue. A cynic might think he is keen to avoid being tainted by their captivity in an election year and that he especially to avoid the subject because it makes the terrorists look bad and his far-Left supporters, who believe only Israel can be evil, don’t like the counter-narrative of facts.
Biden issued an anodyne joint statement with 16 other nations on April 25, but other than such occasional references and minimal expressions of concern, the past seven months have been notable for his relative silence. Neither Biden nor his appointees nor the media seem even to mention the hostages’ names.
Biden doesn’t make them a public part of his diplomacy. He demanded a ceasefire from Israel. He is withholding from Israel arms shipments specifically authorized by law. Yet nowhere does he declare that Hamas’s release of the five Americans is a nonnegotiable predicate for any ceasefire.
He should go further: Rather than pressuring Israel to stop military operations, he should warn Hamas that until it releases hostages, he will not lift a finger to dissuade Israel from any action it wishes to take against the terrorist regime. He should threaten U.S. action targeting Hamas’s leaders wherever they may be while the hostages remain in captivity.
If you type “hostage crisis” into a search engine, you are offered information about news events not now but from 44 years ago. That is partly because U.S. hostages were taken seriously back then — far more so than now. The Iran hostage crisis of 1979-81 was a daily national anxiety. For 444 days, network anchors led every newscast with stories about the hostages’ fates. The contrast with today, when Iran’s proxies are holding Americans, is stunning.
No administration should allow its national security aims to be determined exclusively by the condition of hostages. Nor should it weakly beg for their release. But there should be a proper balance of presidential and media pressure to secure freedom for captive Americans even while keeping the national interest clearly in mind.
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The news media’s left-wing straitjacket no longer allows reporters to see themselves, even in appropriate circumstances, as Americans first. If you’re just a “citizen of the world,” you refuse to see American hostages as being of any particular concern, and certainly less important than castigating Israel when bombs fired by terrorists fall on Gazan hospital parking lots.
Hostages Edan Alexander, Omer Neutra, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Sagui Dekel-Chen, and Keith Siegel deserve better from our nation’s president and its news media. The silence is shameful.
