In a torrent of interviews he gave on Sunday, Adam Boehler, the US special presidential envoy for hostage affairs, said several things that – frankly – sounded crazy to the Israeli ear.
He called the hostages “prisoners” and the Palestinian security prisoners “hostages”; he used terms like “they don’t have horns growing out of their heads,” “guys like us,” and “pretty nice guys” when discussing his talks with Hamas; and he said Hamas would be willing to lay down its arms.
All of that sounded utterly detached from reality.
Yet, at the end of his interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, he sounded downright Israeli.
Asked whether American journalist Austin Tice, missing in Syria since 2012, was still alive, Boehler said he didn’t know. But his job, he said, was to bring Tice – and all Americans held abroad – home.
Bring the Americans home
“If he [Tice] is there, I’m going to bring him home,” Boehler said. “If he’s dead, I’m going to dig up his remains with the FBI – we do it together – and we’ll bring him home to his mom because that is the right thing to do.
“Our Americans – I don’t care where they are – if they are lost somewhere – we are going to come for you. It is one of our ethos, one of our most important ethos, and we are going to reclaim that ethos.
“We lost it a little bit under the Biden administration, but we are going to reclaim that ethos because, in my mind, we should be getting everybody home. We owe it to each other, and I’m not going to stop until we get them.”
That kind of rhetoric regarding bringing home Americans held on trumped-up charges or held hostage abroad is not heard every day.
One wonders whether Boehler and the Trump administration, which has made the return of Americans a high priority and has brought home 11 Americans held hostage abroad (including two Israeli-Americans) since US President Donald Trump took office, has not been influenced by the Israeli attitude on this matter.
ISRAEL’S DEEP commitment to recovering hostages, dead or alive, has clearly made an impression on Trump.
At the first meeting of his cabinet on February 26, after the release of four of the eight bodies in the recent ceasefire deal, he remarked with admiration: “I will say one thing; I’ve spoken to a lot of the parents and a lot of the people involved, and they want those bodies almost as much, and maybe even just as much, as they wanted their son or their daughter. Amazing.”
He continued, “It’s the biggest thing. It’s incredible the level [at which] they want the bodies of these people. They are dead.”
Israel’s sensitivity to the fate of the hostages – and the enormous price it is willing to pay for their return – is met both with admiration and bewilderment abroad.
Some see it as a profound expression of national solidarity. Others question the wisdom of releasing terrorist murderers. According to a chilling Maariv report on Friday, the terrorists released in the hostage deals since October 7 have murdered 639 Israelis.
In his interview with Tapper, Boehler said that thousands of Americans are being held abroad. He said Hamas is holding one American – Edan Alexander – and the bodies of four others and that 50 US citizens were killed in Hamas attacks.
Then he said something most Americans don’t realize, “We live in the United States, the strongest country in the world, and there are 6,000 Americans [being held] in different countries. One of my views here is that we have to change that completely.”
In a Fox interview last month, he drilled down on that figure, saying that there are “about a hundred-plus Americans” being held against their will. “I will tell you right now there are 6,000 Americans in foreign jails. That doesn’t mean everybody is innocent, by the way, but right now, there are 6,000 Americans in foreign jails.”
Unlike in Israel, however, the plight of these Americans – whom the US carefully labels “wrongfully detained” rather than “hostages” – rarely dominates public discourse. Even high-profile cases, like that of American teacher Marc Fogel – jailed in Russia in 2021 for a minor medical cannabis infraction – fail to galvanize widespread public pressure.
The James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, which tracks the number of Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad, issued a report at the end of 2024 saying that at least 54 Americans fit this category, with many of them held by state actors such as China and Russia.
Boehler, perhaps influenced by the Israeli example, is trying to elevate the issue.
THE DIFFERENCE in public attitudes toward hostages in Israel and the US is shaped by many factors: cultural norms, public engagement, and government policies, as well as scale and geography. Israel is a small and close-knit society and feels these cases acutely. With its vast population, the US has a more detached approach.
Two Gallup polls – one in 1985 and one in 2014 – asked whether securing hostages’ safe release should be prioritized over discouraging future abductions by refusing to negotiate. In 2014, less than half (43%) supported prioritizing their return.
Unlike in Israel, where hostage recovery is ingrained in the national ethos, the issue does not command the same urgency in the US. While Washington does work to secure releases through diplomacy, intelligence, and, at times, prisoner swaps, its approach is more cautious, and public mobilization is far weaker.
Furthermore, in the US, there is limited awareness and more apathy toward the plight of compatriots, while in Israel – as the past few months have made clear – the issue is an emotional national priority, with relentless public pressure on the government to act.
At the policy level, the US generally avoids concessions, preferring diplomatic efforts to free detainees. In Israel, there is a historical precedent to make significant concessions to bring home hostages.
While Washington has historically discouraged negotiations for hostage releases, fearful it will incentivize others to take more hostages, Jerusalem has engaged in numerous swaps, something that then shapes public expectations.
Culturally, American cases rarely become defining national moments, whereas, in Israel, every hostage’s fate feels personal. The current debate over the hostages repeatedly invokes the argument that if Israel fails to do everything possible for their release, it will betray its fundamental contract with its citizens. That argument is rarely heard in the US.
Boehler’s remarks suggest he is embracing at least part of Israel’s approach – particularly its emphasis on national solidarity (though not necessarily the willingness to pay steep prices for releases). At the very least, his – and Trump’s – words reflect admiration for Israel’s unwavering commitment to bringing its people home, alive or dead.