What’s the first really big news story you can remember?
For me, it was the Iran Hostage Crisis.
It unfolded during President Jimmy Carter’s administration. For those too young to remember: Islamist fundamentalists had executed a successful revolution in Iran, overthrowing Mohammad Reza Pahlavi — the last Shah of Iran — by early 1979. He was replaced by the “Supreme Leader,” Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
On Nov. 4, 1979, several hundred Iranian college students representing a group called the Muslim Student Followers of the Imam’s Line stormed the U.S. embassy in Iran, taking 52 Americans hostage. They were purportedly expressing outrage over the admission of the former Shah to the United States for cancer treatment instead of being handed over to Iran to stand trial. Over the course of the ensuing 444 days that hostages remained in captivity, headlines dominated western media coverage and ultimately contributed to Carter’s eventual loss in the 1980 POTUS election to President Ronald Reagan.
Of course that’s a very abridged summary; the longer story is filled with cold-war subplots and internal U.S. political intrigue (some say multiple factions in the United States slowed the process in order to help secure the election win for Reagan.)
Over the last 10 months, my thoughts have returned to those events repeatedly. I remember writing a letter in school to President Carter, pleading for the return of the hostages (I received a nice picture book about life in the White House in response). I remember my father watching the nightly news commenting his disgust on how long the negotiations played out and his dissatisfaction for the Carter Administration’s apparent “weakness” on the world stage. It seemed to be an ever-present storyline that Americans were glued to.
That all happened 45 years ago. The world in which we live today is a markedly different place. And some things remain the same. Currently, it is believed that Hamas — a proxy terror organization for Iran — still holds at least five surviving American citizens hostage. They were taken on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel, slaughtering 1,200 people and taking more than 230 hostages. Here we are, 306 days later as of the writing of this column, and one consistent theme I can see, at least anecdotally, is a complete disregard for those five Americans among the nonstop obliviating of privileged Western far-left armchair pundits — only too eager to share watermelon imagery and AI-generated pictures expressing their support for the terrorists who committed said atrocities. Even finding their names takes some time:
- Edan Alexander — a 19-year-old New Jersey resident and IDF soldier in in the Golani 51st Battalion.
- Sagui Dekel-Chen — a 35-year-old man who grew up in New Jersey and converts old buses into mobile technological classrooms for underserved communities in southern Israel.
- Hersh Goldberg-Polin (video of his abduction released in June reveals that his left arm had been severed) — a 24-year-old man from California who was reportedly a peace activist.
- Omer Neutra — a 22-year-old IDF tank commander from New York, born one month after 9/11.
- Keith Siegel — a 64-year-old man from North Carolina who was abducted with his wife Aviva, 62. She was released on Nov. 26.
There isn’t a person I know who could name a single one of them. I could only remember two of their names — Hersh, due to the horrific video, and Omer. I had to look the rest up, and it took me a while to find their stories, linked above.
There’s a Jewish prayer called the Mi sheBerakh (מִי שֶׁבֵּרַךְ ), which means, “the one who blessed.” There’s a version of that prayer specifically for those in captivity that many Jews around the world are saying every day for all of the hostages:
I guess all I can say at this point is: bring them home.
