Do we? And why would that be, precisely? Could it be that Joe Biden somehow failed to negotiate their release during the first operational ‘pause’ that he took credit for brokering last month?

Only one American hostage got released in the eight days of that ‘pause,’ and eight more remain, White House spokesman John Kirby told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos this morning:

“We think there’s about eight hostages that are Americans. We know of at least one woman in that group,” Kirby told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview Wednesday on “Good Morning America.”

“We’re doing everything we can to try to get them released,” he continued. “We’re constantly engaged with our partners in the region to try to get this humanitarian pause back in place, so that the flow of hostages can renew.”

Although a temporary cease-fire between Israel and Gaza’s militant rulers, Hamas, ended last week, the U.S. is “still flowing in humanitarian assistance” to civilians in Gaza, according to Kirby.

“And we’re trying to get it up to the level that it was during the pause,” he noted.

Why are those hostages still in the hands of Hamas? Over a week ago, I raised this issue when the Biden administration started using the word ‘hope’ in terms of hostage releases. That was in the fourth day of the ‘pause,’ the last negotiated day in the deal that Biden took credit for brokering, when no Americans had been released. The next day, a single American got exchanged for Israeli prisoners, and the rest still remain in Hamas’ hands.

That is not what Biden claimed to have accomplished in demanding a pause from the Israelis. When taking credit for the deal on November 21, Biden claimed that “bring[ing] Americans home” was his top priority:

As President, I have no higher priority than ensuring the safety of Americans held hostage around the world. That’s why—from the earliest moments of Hamas’s brutal assault—my national security team and I have worked closely with regional partners to do everything possible to secure the release of our fellow citizens. We saw the first results of that effort in late October, when two Americans were reunited with their loved ones. Today’s deal should bring home additional American hostages, and I will not stop until they are all released.

Today’s deal is a testament to the tireless diplomacy and determination of many dedicated individuals across the United States Government to bring Americans home.

That was over two weeks ago. Thus far, Biden’s deal has only released a single American, and that was in eight days of exchanges. Why? Biden took credit for “ensuring the safety of Americans held hostage,” but apparently took a deal that did nothing to guarantee that or even Red Cross access to our fellow citizens.

In fact, Biden didn’t do anything to get other Americans out of Gaza, as another brief update from ABC News reminds us:

“We know of approximately 1,050 individuals (about 350 U.S. citizens, plus lawful permanent residents and family members of U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents) who we are in touch with and who are seeking to depart Gaza,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News, adding it “remains a fluid and quickly evolving situation.”

Wait — isn’t that part of ensuring the safety of Americans around the world? Why didn’t Biden and his team arrange for the exits of Americans from Gaza during the operational pause? That gave the White House and Departments of Defense and State at least seven days to arrange exfiltrations, at the very least, if not an orderly exit either through the Rafah gate or across Israeli lines, or even on the beaches of Gaza. The US Navy has two carrier groups off-shore, and they certainly could have been put to that use.

Instead, Biden and Kirby want Israel to pause again, for another deal in which Biden might actually prioritize the release of Americans held hostage as well as trapped in Hamas’ war zone.

That certainly sounds suspicious. Hanlon’s Razor could apply here, in which we shouldn’t presume malevolence when incompetence can fully explain a failure. Biden and his team abandoned 14,000 Americans to the Taliban while bugging out of Afghanistan in August 2021, so we have ample precedent for this kind of disgraceful disregard for American lives by Biden et al. What this looks like, however, is Biden and his team using American hostages as leverage on Israel, manipulating American public opinion to force them into bad deals and eventually a solve-nothing cease-fire that allows Hamas to survive and rebuild … again.

Finally, this brings us to the media’s performance in this crisis. The grotesque and barbaric impact of October 7 on Israel has understandably overshadowed other aspects of Hamas’ act of war. However, the fact remains that it was also the single largest loss of American life to a terrorist attack since 9/11, and created the worst hostage crisis for the US since at least the 1980s when Hezbollah kidnapped a series of Americans. Not only has the US media largely ignored those aspects, they have also ignored the American hostages almost entirely, despite Biden’s occasional use of them to promote his leadership.

The reasons for downplaying this seem obvious. A hostage crisis in Iran that started in 1979 and lasted the rest of Jimmy Carter’s presidency gripped the nation and the media. That focus may have cost Carter the presidency in 1980, although Carter’s popularity had fallen precipitously before the November 1979 sacking of our embassy in Tehran. It was the single biggest foreign-policy issue for the US in that period, and the media covered it as such.

Today? They can be barely bothered to even mention the fact that Hamas slaughtered dozens of Americans and still hold eight hostage. They’re circling the wagons because they remember what a hostage crisis did to Carter and they don’t want Biden held accountable in the same way for his incompetence — or worse. They did the same thing with the thousands of Americans left behind in Afghanistan over two years ago.

It’s a disgrace, and it reminds us yet again why we need independent voices to raise these issues and break through the Narrative Police in mainstream media and Big Tech Platforms.

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