Paul Overby, an author from western Massachusetts, has been missing since May 2014 when he was kidnapped in Afghanistan. Austin Tice, a former Marine and a freelance journalist, is in his eighth year of captivity in or around Syria. Last month, Moustafa Kassem, an Egyptian-American who was arrested more than six years ago, starved himself to death in an Egyptian prison. In contrast, like many of the world’s 14 million Jews, I came to feel as if Gilad Shalit was a family member. And yet an overwhelming majority of Israelis — 79 percent — supported the exchange.

Source: International New York Times February 19, 2020 09:56 UTC