Family of Israeli-American hostage blames Biden for failure to secure release

MILWAUKEE — Omer Neutra was born one month before 9/11. On Oct. 14, this first-born son of Ronen and Oma Neutra turned 22, presumably beneath the streets of Gaza as a Hamas hostage. 

For 286 days, New York’s Neutra family has lived a nightmare unimaginable to most. 

“Imagine, over nine months not knowing whether your son is alive, waking up every morning praying that he, too, is waking up every morning, that he is strong and surviving,” Oma Neutra told the thousands assembled Wednesday evening in downtown Milwaukee for the third day of the Republican National Convention. The crowd responded, multiple times with an increasingly desperate chant: “Bring them home! Bring them home!”

Oma’s son, (the name Omer means the measure of the harvest’s first fruits in Hebrew), is among eight U.S. citizens taken prisoner by the terrorist group Hamas in Oct. 7’s barbaric attack on Israel. The terrorists raped, tortured, and murdered some 1,200 people in an unholy war to erase the Jews from existence and wipe Israel off the map. Hamas, long and rightly recognized by the U.S. government as a terrorist group, took 251 hostages in the attack. Some are dead, at least 116 are unaccounted for, according to the BBC.   

Twisted Political Calculus 

The Neutras didn’t mention President Joe Biden in their entreaties to the world. They didn’t have to. The Democrat’s failures on this front, driven by what many critics see as a twisted political calculus, are well known. Seeking to walk an untenable tightrope between the American Jewish voters Democrats have long taken for granted and the Muslim vote it craves in swing state Michigan and elsewhere, the Biden administration’s handling of the crisis in the Middle East has been feckless at best, and cravenly criminal at times. Biden has lashed out at Israel, one of the United States’ truest allies, for its war to eliminate Hamas as a threat in Gaza. He has feebly tried to placate the extreme Islamists whose rallying cry, “From the River to the Sea,” is the actual call for a 21st century genocide of the Jews. He has threatened to cut off the promised military aid to help Israel protect itself in a proxy war funded and fueled by Iran, no doubt with some of the money from the pallets of cash Biden’s old boss Barack Obama delivered to the world’s leading sponsor of terrorism.

Biden’s feeble and politically driven foreign policy provision could prove costly for his hopes for a second term — if indeed he remains the candidate of a party that no longer wants him around. A poll last month by the American Jewish Committee shows the alarm among Jews over surging antisemitism in America, accelerated by the American left. Biden’s support among Jewish voters hasn’t taken a beating, but it is down, with 61 percent of Jewish voters supporting the Democrat compared to the 68 percent that backed him in 2020. In what was once considered and still very well may turn out to be a tight presidential election, a 7 percent decline in support in any voting bloc could prove fatal. 

“Talking with Jewish voters in Michigan, “I’ve had a couple of people say point blank, ‘How could any Jew vote for a Democrat?’” Troy Zukowski, the West Michigan chair of the Michigan Jewish Democrats, told CNN last month. “I’m not so concerned about Jews who may vote for Trump. I’m more concerned about those who may vote for third party spoiler candidates or not vote at all.”

‘Where is the Outrage?’

Ronen Neutra told GOP convention attendees that former President Donald Trump personally called the family right after the attack. He said the Republican presidential candidate stands with the hostages. 

“During the brutal Oct. 7 attack on Israel, over 1,200 people were slaughtered. Of them 45 were American citizens,” he said. “Where is the outrage?” 

Trump has lambasted Biden for his vacillating on Israel, saying the president “abandoned” one of America’s top allies. Still, in an interview in May with Spectrum News North Carolina, Trump said he can’t understand why a majority of Jews stick with Democrats. 

“I think maybe they’ll change their mind, but they’ve been wedded to Democrats for you know, for 50 years, probably more than that. And there’s been no president has ever done anything close to what I’ve done for Israel,” he said. 

The Neutras just want their “beautiful son” back. 

As the Times of Israel reported, Omer opted to join the Israeli army after a gap year in Israel in which he delayed attending Binghamton University in New York. Ronen Neutra told CBS News that his son wanted to work toward peace in the region. 

Oma Neutra said she prays Psalm 23 everyday in the unbearable absence. “The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing… Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

“Omer,” the grieving mother called out to her son from the packed convention hall. “We love you. We won’t stop fighting for you.” 

The crowd answered, “Bring them home! Bring them home!”

Matt Kittle is a senior elections correspondent for The Federalist. An award-winning investigative reporter and 30-year veteran of print, broadcast, and online journalism, Kittle previously served as the executive director of Empower Wisconsin.