Last week an American citizen, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, was brutally murdered in a tunnel beneath Gaza. Hamas held Hersh hostage for 11 months, after blowing off his arm with a grenade during the massacres of October 7th. Four other Americans are still held in Hamas’ tunnels and only one nation is fighting for their release: Israel. The Biden-Harris team is instead focused on negotiations and payment.
This comes just one month after the Biden-Harris team negotiated lopsided terms for the release of three Americans wrongfully detained in Russia: Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, and Alsu Kurmasheva.
It seems that a disturbing trend has developed over the last three years: American hostages have become lucrative for terrorists and rogue regimes. The trend of capitulation in negotiations is not how a self-respecting superpower deals with hostage-taking. Authorities, groups, and individuals should fear harming American citizens as was the case with superpowers of the past.
The recent exchange negotiated by the Biden-Harris team—similar to the one involving Brittney Griner in 2022—traded convicted criminals and assassins for innocent Americans, two of whom were journalists abducted in Russia while working on stories. It has been reported that Putin anticipated this deal over a year ago, following the release of Ms. Griner, setting his sights on the release of convicted murderer and Russian national Vadim Krasikov. Putin pressed American diplomats at every engagement to release the assassin convicted of shooting a Georgian citizen in the back with a silenced pistol in the middle of Berlin’s famous Tiergarten in 2019. American diplomats yielded to Putin’s pressure and in doing so sent a message to the wider world that illegal behavior would be rewarded.
The same cunning behind Putin’s hostage-taking surely permeates the minds of Hamas’ leadership in Qatar and in Gaza, where four Americans have been held since Hamas attacked Israel, savagely massacring more than 1200 people and taking more than 250 hostages on October 7, 2023. No rescue attempt has been made by the American military. While citizens of other nations have been released, including the quick return of Thai hostages, Americans were instead viewed as valuable in negotiating a ceasefire. The belief seems to be that payment is more likely than punishment. In fact, the current administration has shown an aversion to any use of strength to return Americans.
Earlier this year, on two separate missions, Israel heroically rescued six hostages taken on October 7th. The more recent raid, which occurred in June and was a combined operation involving police, military, and intelligence units, was a resounding success. It showed a mastery of urban tactics, close air support, and intelligence collection within dense urban terrain. Yet within hours of the raid’s completion U.S. Central Command, the geographic combatant command of the world’s most dominant military power, put out a statement not to praise the incredible operation nor celebrate the successful rescue of innocent hostages, but rather one that demonstratively refuted any U.S. support was given to the rescue. The statement, and its sentiment, are telling, revealing a reluctance to provide any assistance, intelligence, or even endorsement of the rescue of hostages. Diplomacy and ransom, it seems, are preferred over strength and justice.
Since October 7 the Biden administration has largely avoided discussing Americans held in Gaza, favoring instead talk of aid to Palestinians. In the days surrounding the June rescue, U.S. Central Command made regular boasts about their effort to build a pier and deliver money, aid, and materials to Gaza without ever mentioning efforts to secure hostages.
All of this is a break from traditional protections for citizens of the world’s dominant superpower. Cicero, 70 years before Christ’s birth, spoke frequently of the power of Roman citizenship, popularizing the phrase Civis Romanus sum (“I am [a] Roman citizen”) throughout his In Verrum speeches. Just shy of a century later, that same protection, recorded in the Acts of the Apostles, was afforded to Saint Paul. Closer to our own time in 1850, when a Jewish British citizen was attacked in Athens by an antisemitic mob, Henry John Temple, then British Foreign Secretary, invoked the phrase when he called for, and enacted, a British naval blockade of Greece. A century later, standing at the Berlin Wall and decrying the imprisonment of East Germans by the physical manifestation of Russian authoritarianism, President Kennedy stated that Civis Romanus Sum was the proudest boast that could be made.
Citizenship of the world’s leading power has long been a mark of protection and pride. But under the current policies, it is becoming a price tag. This is a dangerous trend that must be reversed by a show of strength and resolve.
During the Trump administration, when an American mother, Caitlin Coleman, and her three children were held hostage by the Haqqani network in Pakistan, the president directed American forces to rescue her. He then directed the State Department to warn the Pakistani government of the imminent operation. The Pakistani government, fearing another embarrassing U.S. raid into the nation, rapidly moved to secure the release of the mother and her children. No payment was made—the threat of force was enough. That same threat of force has been absent during the current administration. For the sake of Americans traveling and working abroad, it must return. American Civis Sum should be a statement of protection and a guarantee of justice, not of a price tag.
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