‘RELEASE THEM NOW'
Nasatir: "Language like that would put the onus back on the people that took those 200 hostages — with 101 still in captivity. It should be a tagline for us to start saying that enough is enough."
By Michael Golden
I was scheduled to do an interview yesterday with Jewish Federation Chicago’s Lonnie Nasatir about two horrendously antisemitic billboards that popped up along I-294 Tollway north of the city. Someone had hacked the billboard company, and the two bills read: “FUCK ISRAEL” and “DEATH TO ISRAEL.”
It never ends. I’m not attaching the photos.
But before we got on our call, news broke of the IDF’s elimination of Yayha Sinwar, leader of the Hamas terrorist organization and architect of the October 7 massacre. An active terrorist for decades, Sinwar had replaced the previous chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau, Ismail Haniyeh — who was also disposed of by Israeli forces. Suffice it to say the primary topic of our conversation had changed.
Jewish Federation is not only one of the strongest supports in the world for the Jewish people, it also provides humanitarian services to communities of all faiths. As President in Chicago, Lonnie speaks daily in venues far and wide and is the first person that much of the Midwest media goes to when the latest antisemitic incident demands an authoritative voice from a Jewish leader. As such, he also has a savvy mind when it comes to communications.
After we talked a bit about the killing of Sinwar, Lonnie suggested a change in strategic messaging in the effort to free the remaining hostages:
“What’s been bothering me, too, is that ‘Bring Them Home Now’ has been the mantra. And I've said it, too, to bring them home. And there's something very Jewish about that in terms of, we want to have Jewish agency. But I think that when you say ‘bring them home,’ it puts all the onus on the IDF to bring them home. I think another slogan should be ‘Release Them Now.’ Like almost putting it back on the people that took those 200 people and now 101 still in captivity. It should be a tagline for us to start saying that enough is enough. Release them now. Your whole land has been decimated because of its terrible leadership. Release them and begin anew.”
Bullseye. Lonnie was saying that there may exist a point of leverage right now because of the IDF’s extraordinary performance over the last four weeks.
How realistic a possibility the release of the hostages is in the days ahead of us is just as open a question as it was before the elimination of Sinwar. This morning, Jonathan Dekel-Chen, whose Israeli-American son Sagui is still being held captive by Hamas, spoke with very clear eyes about the present situation:
“We simply don’t know right now who we’re dealing with. If negotiations can be pushed forward, who exactly can Israel and the intermediaries interact with?”
Sagui has a wife and three little girls waiting for him to be released. It makes me sick to even write the words, and also makes me feel like we should have published even more articles about the hostages and their captors.
At the end of my conversation with Lonnie, we did talk for a minute about the heinous billboard messages along the tollway. His update:
The people that own the billboard, when they found out about it, they were just horrified. They took it down immediately. We're actually working with them. We’re working with them on having more positive messages condemning antisemitism, which they're planning to put up next week.”
Good stuff. But in the near term, I can’t help but envision thousands of billboard, TV and digital advertisements that banner or include three specific words.
Release Them Now.
Michael Golden is the Editor-In-Chief of JEWDICIOUS.
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