Hostage-taking for the purpose of “swaps, payouts and policy shifts” has been a tool for those seeking some kind of leverage over others. Since the future King Phillip II of Macedonia was taken hostage by the Greek State of Thebes in the 4th Century BCE there has been a written record of these events that are, at times, illuminating and tragic.
One of my courses in graduate school was the study of Don Quixote (1605/1615) by Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616). Don Quixote is an epic work and considered the “first modern novel” in world literature.
Part of my study of the literary piece was the review of Cervantes’ life that included his capture in 1575 by the North African Barbary Pirates and held hostage for 5 years before being ransomed. To me, it is engrossing that these were the ancestors of the Barbary Pirates that caused the building of the U.S. Navy, the words “to the shores of Tripoli” in the Marine Corps anthem and a war against them in 1805 among others.
In my own experience, I remember the large number of Denver police officers that included Billy Gallegos, coming to campus for a language proficiency test that qualified them for extra pay. After successfully completing the test, I embraced Billy in congratulations and felt the bullet proof vest he wore under the shirt.
William “Bill” Gallegos from Pueblo, Colorado, was a Corporal in the Marine Security Detachment, United States Embassy, Tehran, Iran when the facility and its people were taken hostage on November 4, 1979 by Iranian militant students. Gallegos and 51 other hostages were held for 444 days, an event that “undermined President Carter’s conduct of foreign policy and made the administration look weak and ineffective.”
It is during that period that the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in support of a very shaky Marxist government. And, to add insult to injury for President Carter, the Iranians released the hostages on January 20, 1981, minutes after the inauguration of Ronald Regain who had defeated Carter in a landslide.
The Hamas and other Palestinian groups attack on Israel on October 7, 2023 killed 1,139 including 695 Israelis (counting 36 children among them), 71 foreign nationals and 373 members of the security forces. The attackers also took some 250 hostages, half of which were subsequently released while the rest are still captive.
Palestinian rationale for the attack and hostage-taking are the Israeli occupation and blockade of the Gaza Strip, expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank and Israeli settler violence against Palestinians. The last two points are also the subject of division and protests by a great number of Israelis who additionally see the Israeli-Hamas War more as an effort by unpopular Prime Minister Benjamin Natanyaho to stay in power rather than to getting the hostages home.
As bloody and inhumane the Hamas-led attack on Israel is and looks, the far greater and lasting picture is of a small Palestinian enclave crowded with 2 million people, completely surrounded and invaded, with so far 33,000 killed and an expected reduction to dust. This reminds me of reading about the Jewish Warsaw Ghetto, crowded with 3 to 4 hundred thousand people, surrounded, reduced and destroyed by the Nazis between April 19 and May 16, 1943, after the Jews revolted because they found out that they were slated for concentration camps and the ovens.
Something is very wrong with the picture. Are Jews not doing the same thing the Nazis did to them in Poland?
The views expressed by David Conde are not necessarily the views of laVozColorado. Comments and responses may be directed to news@lavozcolorado.com.
