OPINION:
The failure to rescue eight Americans held hostage in the Gaza Strip underscores growing peril for U.S. citizens abroad. While the American passport boasts 188 visa-free or visa-on-entry destinations, the Biden administration’s failure to publicly attempt a rescue of our own is creating danger for American travelers. This failure sends a message to bad actors worldwide: America is weak. The Americans are not coming. Americans abroad are no longer off-limits.
In the summer of 2019, I lived and studied in Almaty, Kazakhstan, with a Kazakh host family. One hot summer day, we went to Kapchagay Reservoir to cool off. When I went out into the lake, I noticed that my host mother — who I knew could not swim — was right behind me. I asked her why she was out deep into the lake where we could barely stand if she couldn’t swim.
“I have to make sure nothing happens to you,” she said in Russian. “I’m a mother, so I know that if something happens to you, your mother will kill me, and then the Americans will come for the rest of us.”
While a nervous chuckle was inserted into that statement, my host mother’s sentiment on America’s ability to protect its citizens abroad solidified my belief that I, as an American, was safe while traveling.
I am an avid traveler, and I took for granted the safety my citizenship provided me, believing that if something happened to me abroad, my government would come to my rescue. Some might say that belief was naive, based on action movies and a sense of American exceptionalism. That may be the case for some, but my view was based on sentiments like those held by my host mother. With the war in the Middle East still raging an Americans held hostage by terrorists, however, that belief has faded.
Last Oct. 7, Hamas attacked Israel from Gaza, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and kidnapping 251. Among the kidnapped were eight Americans whose fates remained uncertain: Edan Alexander, Itay Chen, Sagui Dekel-Chen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, Gadi Haggai, Judith Weinstein-Haggai, Omer Neutra and Keith Siegel.
Hamas terrorists killed four of them, their bodies held captive, while the rest are believed to be alive. It’s been over 300 days, and they remain in Gaza.
After 329 days, the world learned that Hamas executed 23-year-old Hersh Goldberg-Polin in a tunnel under the city of Rafah. On Aug. 31, the Israeli military discovered his body, along with five others, murdered and dumped by Hamas terrorists.
At the heart of this brutality is an extreme Islamist ideology that sees itself as the antithesis of Western civilization and views Israel as a foreign Western implant in their territory.
Taliban-controlled Afghanistan exemplifies a society that is antithetical to the West, where the systemic and institutionalized dehumanization of women and girls continues to worsen. But Islamic extremism is not limited to Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan and Syria. Islamic extremism is not driven by money but by an ideology that characterizes the West and particularly America as the devil. This ideology is deadly and is already finding its way into North America and Europe.
The Gaza hostage crisis is one of the most publicized since the Iran hostage crisis of 1979. American hostage rescue missions are generally successful. Whether it’s rescuing Americans from Somali pirates or Latin American drug cartels, the fear of U.S. military might and success acted as a deterrent to kidnapping. With the war in Gaza, however, our government’s inaction emboldens terrorists, signaling that Americans are expendable.
This war has also made its way into the American presidential campaign discourse. Recognizing the status of American strength abroad (or lack thereof), former President Donald Trump, in his Republican National Convention address, warned terrorists, “We want our hostages back, and they better be back before I assume office, or you will be paying a very big price.”
At the Democratic National Convention, Vice President Kamala Harris exclaimed, “Now is the time to get a hostage deal and a cease-fire deal done.”
While Ms. Harris did express strong support for Israel and bringing the hostages home, one cannot help but notice the contrast between the candidates’ remarks.
For Ms. Harris, a hostage deal was equated with a cease-fire deal in her speech, which was not true for Mr. Trump. And while Mr. Trump said he would secure “our” hostages, Ms. Harris did not specify Americans held by Hamas and its supporters. While one can argue that these differences are merely descriptive of the people each candidate is speaking to, one thing remains true: The response to this crisis by whoever becomes president next year will have a direct role in dictating how safe Americans are abroad.
It is crucial for American travelers to pay attention to this failure because it has dramatic ramifications for our safety abroad. For the safety of American travelers, it is imperative that we hold our government accountable and demand that it restore its commitment to protecting its citizens abroad. We cannot wait any longer. We must bring them home now.
• Darion Ouliguian is a Christian Armenian Lebanese American and a former director of strategic engagement at Passages Israel, a Christian organization dedicated to taking students to Israel and mobilizing young people to support the Jewish state on campuses and in communities across the U.S, and to stand up against antisemitism.
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