Hamas’s hostage shows evoke a haunting comparison

Another weekend, another grotesque spectacle in Gaza. Hamas released its latest handful of Israeli hostages as part of the fragile ceasefire agreement which is expected to expire next week. As on many Saturdays before, Hamas paraded a trio of Israelis – Omer Shem Tov, Omer Wenkert, and Eliya Cohen – onto makeshift platforms emblazoned with multilingual propaganda declarations and decorative nationalistic flags.

As cheering crowds looked on, the trio were then forced onto the stage, made to smile and wave as heavily-armed militants milled about, before finally being led to freedom by the Red Cross officials so glaringly impotent during their more than 500 days of captivity.

The Hamas display has been likened to everything from a ghoulish circus to a hint of what women accused of witchcraft during the Salem Witch trials-era might have endured. But to me – an American Jew who is also African-American – the Hamas production feels like nothing less than a slave auction in America’s South during the years prior to the Civil War.