Father of former hostage says US Jewish groups shrank from fight for their release

American Jewish organizations have failed the Israeli hostages by not sufficiently advocating on their behalf so as not to clash with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, the father of released American-Israeli hostage Sagui Dekel-Chen maintains.

“History will also not look kindly on some, not all, of the leaderships of major Jewish organizations, in North America certainly,” Jonathan Dekel-Chen tells The Jerusalem Post in an interview, calling out the Jewish organizations’ “inability, unwillingness, or fear” to advocate for the hostages if it means crossing the Israeli government.

Without naming any specific organizations, Dekel-Chen says American Jewish groups should have “put the force, such as it is, of the Jewish organizational world behind prioritizing getting these hostages home above all else.”

Jewish organizations should have made clear that freeing hostages “is an irrefutable Jewish value.”

“The abandonment of that principle in favor of anything – turf wars, fear of anger from within their own communities, and their own positions in leadership, I think is an embarrassment,” he says.

“In a perfect world, the biggest single advocate for the hostages, in action and not just lip service, would be the government of Israel. That simply hasn’t happened,” he laments. “As a result, hostage families themselves have had to take it on.”

“Speaking as a historian of the Jewish people, history will not judge these leaders well for what they have already done and for what I fear they might continue to do,” Dekel-Chen says.