The Media’s Deafening Silence About American Hostages
On Monday, the White House held a Hanukkah reception. Among those not invited: American families who have relatives currently being held hostage by Hamas.
CNN reported that: “Ruby Chen, whose son Itay is a reservist missing since the militant group’s October 7 attacks on Israel, said a number of the families of American hostages were in Washington, D.C., this week, and had reached out to the White House asking to attend the reception but were not invited. A White House spokesperson declined to comment.”
The White House then scrambled to have these families meet President Joe Biden on Wednesday.
Biden isn’t the only one who doesn’t seem to care much about these hostages. The press has been weirdly quiet about their plight and seems content to wait for Biden to “negotiate” their release. If they’re even still alive.
Who are these hostages? Who are the families? What are they going through? It’s possible there have been news reports telling the world about the seven American men and possibly one American woman who are being held captive by these murdering, butchering, raping terrorist thugs. But we couldn’t find any. Even Biden’s unbelievable invitation foul-up was given ho-hum treatment.
This is in stark contrast to other such stories, where the press devotes endless amounts of ink to personalizing and humanizing victims — if they’re the right victim of the right sort of crime, that is.
This media blackout is not for lack of trying by the families. USA Today notes that these families have a public relations firm representing them. And several told CNN that “they wanted the international community – both governments and the Red Cross – to push more forcefully on behalf of their loved ones, to speak out against the terrible conditions they’re experiencing and for their release.”
Nor is it for lack of urgency. Those hostages who have been released describe dire conditions under which they were being held.
One of them, 85-year-old Yocheved Lifshitz, told NBC News that the remaining hostages “need to get out today” or “they won’t live.”
But instead of making U.S. hostages the story and burning the images of them into people’s brains, the press spends most of its time and energy describing the plight of the poor Gazan people and parroting Hamas talking points.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration keeps mouthing platitudes about how it is doing everything in its power to bring these Americans home.
Kamala Harris, for example, claimed weeks ago that “President Biden and I have no higher priority than the safety of Americans. … As I have told families of Americans held hostage: as they advocate for the release of their loved ones, they are not alone. We will not waver in our commitment to these Americans.”
Since then, all Biden seems to have been doing is chastising Israel for the way it’s conducting the war while urging restraint and ceasefires.
Just yesterday, the New York Times reported that “Biden warns Israel it is ‘losing support’ over war.”
“We will not waver”? “No higher priority”? Who do the miscreants running things in the White House think they’re fooling?
Comments are closed.
